Silk and Stone

by Deborah Smith

  William, who looked protective and upset at her speech, grasped her hand. “No.” He glared at Sarah. “Sister, I’ve raised you and looked after you, and to do it the best I could, I gave up dreams I had of traveling—seeing the world, being footloose and fancy-free. Now I ask this one thing of you—not to throw family traditions in my face when I’ve upheld the best traditions a family can hope for. I’ve done my duty. You will always be my sister, and I love you, and there’s no call for you to feel threatened because I’ve brought Alexandra into this house.”

  Sarah gasped. “You think I don’t want you to have a wife? Good Lord—no. But not a wife who’d deliberately make trouble between you and everyone who respects you.”

  “You’re the one who’s making trouble, sister. You’re ruining my wedding day, and that is the legacy people in this town will remember—that you destroyed the happiest day of my life with your bickering.”

  Sarah’s hand rose to her throat. Stricken with betrayal, she gazed at Alexandra. “Why did you marry my brother? You had dozens of boys at college.”

  “I have to explain why I cherish your brother? He’s so much more of a man—a gentleman—than anyone else I’ve ever met. How can you imply that I have ulterior motives. I love him.”

  “Liar. William is crazy about you—blind in love with you. But you don’t love my brother—you love his name, and his title, and his money. And having our family’s heirloom is a way you can show everyone that you’ve moved up in the world—you’ve got more respectability than any Duke could earn with a thousand mills. You aren’t a Duke anymore—not a money-grubbing, slave-driving Duke. That’s what my brother and my ruby mean to you.”

  “Those are damned lies,” William shouted. “Sarah, you apologize!”

  Sarah stared at him in heartbroken defeat. “I was born and raised in this house. My mother sat in this very room and told me the story about the Pandora ruby, and how it would belong to me someday. If you don’t honor that, I’ll never set foot in this house again.” Her brothers mouth moved silently. His agony was obvious. Alexandra touched his arm, and he looked away from Sarah. “I’ve done what I think is best. Please try to honor that.”

  “No. I can’t.” She walked toward the door. “Hugh, stop her,” William said, starting forward, then halting, looking from his sister to his wife, who gave him a beseeching stare.

  “She’s right,” Hugh said. He followed Sarah out of the parlor.

  Hugh’s mother commanded a place of honor in the middle of the crowded hallway. Small, wide, and calm, she balanced an enormous paisley handbag on the lap of her print dress. An outlandish blue hat decorated with a single spring daffodil sat jauntily on her head, above a coiled braid of graying black hair. Around her neck hung a half dozen strings of garnets and rose quartz stones, all of which she’d collected herself over the years.

  Rachel Raincrow’s bright-black eyes nearly disappeared under folds of honey-colored wrinkles when she squinted at Sarah and Hugh. “Is that woman keeping the stone?”

  Hugh nodded.

  “She’s a thief, then. And William is a fool.” Rachel Raincrow, daughter of a white road-construction engineer who’d passed through on a Roosevelt WPA project during the Depression without leaving her his name, was a first-class rockhound. No one understood quite how she did it, but she had an uncanny knack for finding anything that glittered. She’d supplied Pandora’s jewelers with local stones for years. A few of her more illustrious finds had paid Hugh’s way through medical school.

  And no one took her pronouncements lightly. Alexandra’s reputation was doomed among the oldtimers.

  Sarah caught Alexandra’s kid sister, Frannie, looking at them miserably. Frannie Duke was a little blond beatnik, a truly odd, gentle character among the Dukes, which was why she was the only one of the clan Sarah would have welcomed as a sister-in-law. Too bad Frannie was only seventeen and didn’t have Alexandra’s Barbie-doll beauty. Too bad that quiet, sweet, aging-bachelor William had fallen in love with the wrong Duke sister.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah,” Frannie said tearfully.

  Sarah bit her lip and refused to answer. Hugh pressed his fingertips against her spine and smoothly guided her up a hallway to the front door. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “I’m not greedy or jealous. This isn’t about the ruby—it’s about broken promises.”

  “I love you,” Hugh answered. “Let’s go home.”

  Frannie crept into an upstairs bedroom as Alexandra was changing into her traveling suit. Her sister was alone, standing like some slim, perfect mannequin before a full-length gilded mirror in nothing but her ruby necklace, white silk panties and a white bra with cups as pointed as nose cones on rockets. Alexandra could kill somebody with those big, pointed bosoms. Frannie felt, as always, as if there were only so much space in the world for egos, and Alexandra had taken both their shares long ago. Frannie had always been in awe of her willpower. Alexandra had alternately defended her and ignored her, all their lives.

  Frannie was the black sheep—a mousy little day-dreamer, not good potential for upgrading the family’s position by snaring an important husband—a mission for which both she and Alexandra had been instructed all their lives.

  Alexandra was crying silently, tears sliding down her face in streaks of pink rouge. Frannie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her sister in tears. When Alexandra heard her close the door, she pivoted, wiping her face quickly, frowning. “What do you want?”

  Frannie took a deep breath. “What you did was wrong.” There. It was said. For the first time in her life she’d overcome cowardly inertia and confronted her sister. Like a boulder pushed over the crest of a hill, her courage rolled out of control. “I know how you operate,” Frannie continued breathlessly, straightening her back, hands knotted by her sides, defiant. “You act so innocent, but you’re always thinking of yourself first. You … you persuaded Judge Vanderveer to give you his family heirloom, even though you knew it shouldn’t be yours. You don’t care at all that you came between him and Sarah.”

  “You’re right—I don’t.” Alexandra sank wearily into a chair. “Nobody cares about my happiness. Why should I have any pangs of conscience about making other people miserable?”

  Frannie knelt beside her and awkwardly touched one of her hands. “I care about your happiness. I thought marrying Judge Vanderveer is exactly what you want.”

  Alexandra laughed bitterly but clasped Frannie’s hand. “You live inside your books and your daydreams. You think you’re safe from reality that way. You don’t have the foggiest idea what’s going on, do you?”

  “I know that you didn’t have to marry him if you didn’t want to.”

  “Don’t you understand? I want to be somebody. I was raised to want that—it’s all I know. Either a girl marries well, or she’s nothing.”

  “You sound just like Mom and Dad.” Frannie tugged at her hand. “But there’s so much more. Women don’t have to be measured by their husbands’ importance.”

  “Oh, hell, Frannie, what else can we be measured by? I wanted to go to law school. You know what I was told—it wouldn’t do me any good, it was a waste of time, forget it. End of discussion. Men have all the choices. Women have only one—pick your targets, get what you can, use it before you get fat and wrinkled and nobody gives you a second look. Well, that’s what I intend to do—and everybody better get out of my way.”

  Frannie rocked back on her heels, staring at her older sister with open-mouthed distress. “You did talk Judge Vanderveer into giving you that ruby.”

  “Hell, yes, I did. Just to prove that I could. And I’m never letting it out of my cold-blooded little fists either. Sarah Raincrow has more than she deserves already. Nobody keeps her from doing what she wants. Good God, she got to marry the man she loves, and he’s an Indian.”

  “Do you want to make your own husband take sides against his sister?”

  “I want him to do exactly what I tell him to do. That’s the only power a w
oman has, and I intend to use it.”

  “You don’t love him. Alexandra, you took vows, but you lied.”

  “It makes no difference to him. He wanted a prize, and he got one.”

  “No, he loves you. He really does.”

  “He’s forty years old and about as exciting as stale bread. He doesn’t love me—he loves the idea that he can have me.”

  Frannie’s shock turned to righteous anger. Dropping Alexandra’s hand, she stood. “I know about you and that law student. I know you sneaked out to see Orrin Lomax even after you got engaged.” She shivered with frustration. Her shoulders slumped, and she turned numbly toward the door. “You could have married Orrin.”

  Alexandra was silent. Her eyes shimmered with new tears. “Orrin has a lot of ambition but no money, and no clout. If I married him, I’d have to give up my horses. We couldn’t afford them.”

  Her horses? Alexandra was an avid rider, and her two Arabians were champion stock, and she doted on them, but to marry money just to keep them.… Frannie shook her head in dull amazement. “You love Orrin, but you can marry somebody else so you can keep your horses.”

  Alexandra stiffened. “Do you think your future is going to be better than mine? You think you can just traipse off and do as you please?”

  “I can try.”

  “Frannie, Carl Ryder was the first in a series of long, hard lessons you’re going to learn about reality.”

  Frannie stared at her. Even the mention of Carl’s name brought an ache to her chest. In a small, shattered voice she asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Mom and Dad arranged to have your soldier transferred out of state. Did you really think they’d let you meddle around with the son of mill workers? You can mumble about social equality all you want—you can turn up your nose at the family’s money and call us all a bunch of snobs, you can talk about brotherhood and freedom until you’re blue in the face, but you not only can’t do anything about it, you don’t even suspect what you’re up against. They’ll have your soft little hide nailed to a respectable altar by the time you turn my age. I made the best of my choices, and so will you.”

  Frannie stumbled to the door and held its cold, crystal knob for support. “They got rid of Carl?”

  “Of course they did. And the same thing will happen with anyone else who isn’t good enough for a Duke. They threatened to disown me if I even talked about marrying Orrin. If I can’t get around them, why in the world would you assume you can?”

  “But … but why do you have to care about being disowned?”

  “Because I won’t be a nothing, you idiot. I won’t struggle along in a cheap apartment with a law student and be treated like a fool!”

  Cold sweat trickled down Frannie’s back. She jerked at the door, opened it, and looked back at her sister miserably. “I’m not going to lose Carl. And I’m not going to be like the rest of this family—patronizing and narrow-minded. You’re just taking the easy way out,” Frannie whispered. “You know it, and you hate it, and it’ll make you sorry.”

  Alexandra rubbed her arm across her swollen eyes, a bitter, girlish gesture that made her look vulnerable for just an instant. But when she lowered her arm, her gaze was hard, set. “Just keep my secrets for me, Frannie. I’ll worry about the rest.”

  Frannie nodded. “You’re my sister.”

  She left Alexandra alone with that small vow, and fled.

  Frannie huddled miserably in the azalea garden beyond the backyard lights at Highview. The house blazed with lights and music as Dukes danced with Vanderveers and all were impeccably polite to one another. Alexandra and Judge Vanderveer had left hours ago in the judge’s shiny Edsel, showered in rice and confetti. Frannie’s last image of her sister was burned deeply in her mind: smiling, as sleek as a model in her beautiful white suit, looking like a blond Jackie Kennedy, with the ruby dangling prominently down the front of her jacket.

  Frannie had been reduced to hiding from their parents and thinking about Carl Ryder. They’d met last year at a dance hosted by the Raleigh Young Ladies’ Progressive Club. The club performed its civic duties by busing fresh-faced second lieutenants up from Fort Bragg.

  Carl was no second lieutenant; he was a sergeant who’d been assigned to drive the bus. The club matrons let him into the dance but were in high lather over the situation: He was not elite pickings for progressive young ladies.

  He was, in fact, the orphaned son of mill workers, and he’d been on his own since he was sixteen, had joined the army at eighteen—four years ago—and loved it dearly. His one ambition in life was to be a soldier. But when he saw Frannie across the dance floor, and she saw him from her corner behind the punch table, where she was trying furtively to read Jack Kerouac without anyone noticing, it was love at first sight. She could almost hear “Some Enchanted Evening.”

  He’d walked up to her, spit-and-polished, very formal and polite, and then he’d bowed and said, “You’re a sight for sore eyes, miss.”

  It was love at first sight on both sides, and they found ways to meet in secret, until her parents discovered them and put a stop to the romance. Dukes didn’t carry on with mill workers, they’d said, as if Carl were destined to be a mill hand simply because of his bloodlines.

  She’d vowed not to forget him when he was transferred to Fort Benning, down in Georgia. His letters came every week, squirreled away for her by her parents’ sympathetic housekeeper, and Frannie feasted longingly on his earnest, simple, carefully spelled words for months.

  She doubted she’d ever see him again. Knowing now what her parents had done to get him out of her life, she hated them.

  “Frannie.” Her name came out of the darkness beyond a row of juniper shrubs. Her name, spoken in Carl’s deep drawl. She ran to him, astonished, frightened, and ecstatic. They held each other and kissed with frantic welcome. “What are you doing here?” she whispered. He was dressed in trousers and a plaid shirt. “Carl, you didn’t desert, did you?”

  “Of course not. What kind of man do you think I am? I’m on leave, Frannie. I got a week. I borrowed a car and drove the whole way from Georgia without a stop. I had to come find you. I’m getting shipped over to Germany.”

  “Oh, no.”

  He got down on one knee and took her hands. “We don’t have much time. I know this sounds crazy, but … come with me. I love you. Marry me. Please.”

  Her mind whirled. What did she have to look forward to here? College, next year, but she wanted to study philosophy and her parents had already said no because they thought it was ungodly and maybe even Communist. No one thought her worthwhile; she wasn’t a go-getter like Alexandra, and didn’t want to be.

  But more than any of that, she adored Carl Ryder. “I—I—I—of course. Certainly. Yes.” She dropped to her knees and kissed him. He threw back his head, on the verge of whooping, and she clamped a hand over his mouth. “How?” she asked.

  Carl kissed her hand and murmured thickly, “I’ll go in and just tell your folks that’s what we’re going to do, Frannie. That’s how. They can wail and carry on all they want about my pedigree, but this is the U-nited States of America, which I signed up to protect and serve along with all its freedoms, and, well, hell, Frannie, you and me having the freedom to get married is what this country’s all about.”

  His passionate and simple ideas about constitutional rights wouldn’t hold a drop of water in a debate, but she loved Carl’s way of looking at things, loved him right to the bottom of his honest, red-white-and-blue soul. “No, no, no. You don’t understand.” She clasped her throat. “They’ll lock me in a room and have you carted away. By the time they let me out again, you’ll be speaking German like a native.”

  “I’m no coward. I’m not about to carry you away like a thief—”

  “You’re no thief. Believe me, I know what a thief is like.” She cupped her hands to his face. “I love you. If you really want to marry me, then let’s go. Let’s just go. It’s the only way. My clothes are at a
motel in town. I’m staying in a room with two of my cousins and an aunt. I have a key.”

  He scowled. “Frannie, if I take you away from your family like this, they’ll say I didn’t have the guts to do right by you. They already think I’m after the Duke money.”

  “I don’t need them. I don’t care if I ever see any of them again. I’ll write to them when it’s safe. After we’re married. They can’t do anything about it then.” She looked at him firmly. “I love you too much to risk losing you again. If you love me that much, then don’t you take the chance either.”

  He pondered this in grim silence, then sighed and said, “Frannie, are you sure?”

  “Yes. Are you?”

  “I was sure the second I laid eyes on you. Still am. I’ll be good to you. I don’t have a bad temper, and I don’t drink, and I work hard, and—”

  “I know.”

  “But I don’t think we’ll ever be rich on a sergeant’s pay, Frannie.”

  “I don’t like rich. In fact, I hate rich.”

  “Don’t go crazy, now.”

  “Crazy about you.”

  “That’s good, then.” He stood and helped her up. They looked at each other in solemn consideration. “I wish we could have a wedding like this,” he said, nodding toward the house. “You deserve what your sister has.”

  Frannie shuddered. “I hope not,” she answered. She grabbed his hand. They disappeared into the darkness, and she never looked back.

  Sarah lay deeply entwined in Hugh’s arms, but even his warmth and the peaceful darkness of their bedroom couldn’t comfort her. She tried to concentrate on the sounds of the old comfortable log house—the soft creak of an oak limb against the second-story roof, the murmur of spring crickets outside the open window, the faint, tinny drone of Rachel Raincrow’s radio coming from the bedroom across the hall.