“About what?” Serena stood her ground despite the movement Pearlie made as if to brush past her into the room.
“There are a few things you should know about Ward Dunbar, a few things you should understand, before you get hurt.”
It would be foolish not to listen to the other woman, Serena told herself, not to learn everything possible about the man who was keeping her here. Curiosity did not enter into it at all. With a brief nod, she stepped back, allowing Pearlie to enter before closing the door firmly behind her.
Pearlie took a turn about the sitting room, pausing to glance into the open door of the bedroom without troubling to hide her avid interest. Ward’s shirt, the one he had removed the evening before, lay over a chair where he had tossed it with his limp and twisted tie. The bed where he and Serena had so recently lain was unmade, with both indented pillows drawn together in the center above the rumpled sheets.
Pearlie swung around. “Well,” she said, her voice strained. “Aren’t you going to offer me some refreshment?”
“I’m sorry. I have nothing. Ward drank the last of the coffee Sanchow brought up for breakfast before he went out.”
“I had in mind something stronger. Considering the location of these rooms, it doesn’t seem too much to ask. But don’t trouble yourself. Now I think of it, this isn’t a social call.”
“In that case, I won’t ask you to sit down,” Serena replied. Clasping her hands lightly in front of her, she waited for Pearlie to state her business.
A flush of anger mottled Pearlie’s pale face. She eyed Serena with dislike. “You won’t be so calm, I think, when I tell you that the man you are living with, before he came to Cripple Creek, was charged with murder.”
Serena went still. She could feel the blood drain from her face. And then she noticed the small, satisfied smile that thinned Pearlie’s lips. “You are lying,” she breathed.
“No. I assure you it’s the truth. Ward was hauled off to jail and arraigned before a judge for the murder of my husband.”
“Your — husband?”
“Shocking, isn’t it? Even unbelievable. It sometimes seems impossible even to me. Shall I tell you about it?”
Without speaking, Serena indicated a seat on one of the couches. Spreading her skirts with conscious grace, Pearlie settled herself, then watched bright-eyed as Serena took a place across from her.
“They were law partners, you see, Ward and my husband. They had one of the best firms in Natchez. They were the best of friends, too, had been since they were boys together. They practically lived in each other’s houses when they were growing up. After Ward’s parents died, Jim’s people were especially kind to him. Later, as young men, beaux sabres, of Natchez, they went courting together, courting — me.”
“Then why? What happened?” The horror was strong in Serena’s voice. Her fingers were knit so closely together that the knuckles were white.
“Jim, that was my husband’s name, proposed first. Ward, ever the gentleman, backed off when he saw how desperately in love with me his friend was. He would do nothing to jeopardize Jim’s chances of winning me for his bride, though heaven knows I gave him enough encouragement. Ward was serious about me too, I know he was, but all through their boyhood he had been in the habit of holding back where Jim was concerned. He knew he was stronger than Jim, that his was the more forceful personality. I think a part of the trouble then, and later, was that Jim knew it too.”
“If it was Ward you wanted, and you were so certain he cared for you, why didn’t you just refuse his friend’s proposal?”
“You don’t understand. They were both wealthy men, both of the elite of Natchez, both handsome. How the other girls envied me, having them both on the string! My name wasn’t Pearlie then. Lord, how my mother would shiver if she knew I was called anything so vulgar. We were aristocrats too, you see, but not rich. No, not rich at all. I could not afford to refuse such a good offer for the sake of one that might never materialize. I put Jim off as long as I could, but Ward still would not speak, not even when I led him out into the dark garden alone the night of my eighteenth birthday. In answer to my hints concerning marriage, he only went on about what a good husband Jim would make me. I was so annoyed with him, I gave Jim the answer he wanted to hear that very evening. And so we were married. Ward was best man, and the kiss he gave me after the ceremony was more exciting than anything that happened on my wedding night.”
Distaste flickered over Serena’s face. “But your husband, how—?”
Pearlie shrugged. “After six years of wedded bliss, he shot himself.”
“Shot himself? But you said—”
“Oh, no. I never said Ward killed him. I only said he was arrested for his murder.”
The other woman’s smile was mocking, hateful. Serena swallowed hard, holding to her temper with difficulty. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I,” the other woman answered in deliberate provocation, though there was a small frown between her eyes. “I never refused Jim anything, not anything. His house ran smoothly, our servants catered to his every whim. His favorite dishes were always on the table. I entertained his stodgy parents, and was always awake when he came to bed. Perhaps if there had been children, babies to occupy me and make him think better of himself as a man — but there were none.”
Serena could spare little sympathy. “There must have been something.”
“You mean I must have done something,” Pearlie said, flinging her head up. “Well, all right, though I still think it was childish of Jim to be so jealous. I was bored. God, how bored I was of sitting making lumpy French knots, or tatting lace. Genteel tea parties make me sick with the endless whispers about childbirth and the change of life, or the illnesses of snotty-nosed brats. I wanted to be out and doing, but the only people who lived like that were either whores or men. Women were only allowed to join either group under one condition.”
“You were unfaithful to your husband.”
Pearlie laughed. “Unfaithful. How quaint, but yes, that is what it came to in the end. It was exciting. I felt alive and wanted and gloriously wicked.”
“And Ward?” The words were out before Serena could stop them.
“Ward? He was a gentleman, damn him. He fended off my lures. Once he even told me in plain words that he did not intend to cuckold his friend as everyone else did. That’s what makes it funny, the way things turned out.”
Her face tight, Serena waited for the woman to overcome her amusement and continue. The woman’s harsh laughing died away, and she gave a petulant shrug.
“It was at the harvest dance. Ward and I had had our talk in the library. It was a warm night and the windows and doors throughout the big old house were thrown open. What we did not realize was that Jim overheard a part of our conversation. He went straight to our bedroom, where he kept a pistol, then he had a horse hitched to his buggy and drove himself to his office. He wrote out a careful note explaining what he was about to do, and why, and then he held the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”
“But the note,” Serena said, leaning forward with a frown. “If it was found, how did Ward come to be blamed?”
“Sheer bad luck. When Ward left the dance he decided to go by the office for a brief he had been studying. He found Jim, read the note. He knew the fact that Jim had taken his own life would horrify his parents, people who were like family to Ward, and the reason set out so clearly in the note would cause a scandal that would nearly kill Jim’s mother. The effect on my life you can imagine. With everything brought out into the open like that, with Jim’s death laid at my doorstep, I would never be able to show my face outside my house again. Ward did the only thing he could see that would better things. He took the note and pistol, and rearranged the office to make it look as if Jim had been shot and robbed after a struggle. It was a good solution; the only thing that kept it from working was that Ward was seen as he left the office that night.”
“There was gossip about you a
nd the other men, I suppose,” Serena said slowly.
“And of course, quite a few had noticed when Ward and I disappeared together at the dance.”
“If he was seen leaving the office later, and Jim was discovered dead the next morning, then it must have looked as though he and his friend had quarreled over you.”
“Not only that, the sheriff found the pistol in Ward’s carriage.”
“He found the pistol, but not the note?”
“How quick of you,” Pearlie applauded. “No, he did not find the note, and Ward kept silent, refusing to defend himself. He would have let himself be hanged, I suppose, if I hadn’t acted to save him. What Ward hadn’t realized was that Jim left two notes. One to me personally, to tell me he loved me in spite of everything, and another for public consumption, to punish me for what I had done to his dream of a sweet, ordered life, for daring to want more than he had to give.”
“You made the first note public? You did that for Ward?”
“Was I supposed to let him die? That would have been stupid. Besides, I knew well enough that he would never be able to turn away from me again, not after such a sacrifice. Of course, there were still those who declared that Ward had killed Jim to have me, but a search turned up the other note in Ward’s jacket pocket and the authorities were satisfied. But that wasn’t the end. It didn’t take many days of being cut by our friends, of hearing whispers of the sordid rumors that were floating about, for Ward and me to understand that we were finished in Natchez. There was no one to console us except ourselves.”
“If Ward was innocent, surely he could have stayed and lived the incident down?”
“He might, except that no matter how blameless he was, Ward could not forgive himself for his part in Jim’s death. He wanted nothing more than to get away, to start out new in another place. And then there was the responsibility he felt for me.”
Serena gave a slow nod. “What I don’t understand is why you are telling me this. If you are bent on showing Ward to me in a bad light, then you are going about it in the wrong way.”
“That wasn’t what I had in mind at all,” Pearlie said, a scowl drawing her brows together. “What you feel about him makes no difference to me. But I did mean to let you see that nothing permanent is going to come of this, of you being here with him. He’s not the kind of man who can be tied down, not even if he was free, which he isn’t. This thing that is between the two of us, Ward and me, goes deeper than you can imagine. We have shared so much, good times, bad times. We have been together when we were hurt inside, and afraid. We are outcasts, separated from our people and our homes, but no one can separate us from each other. Not you, not anyone.”
How much of what the woman said was true, how much concocted on the moment? The tale had the ring of truth with its complications and far-reaching consequences, and yet, how many of the conclusions Pearlie had drawn from it were factual, how many the effect of her own hopes and illusions? It could not be denied that there was a bond between Ward and Pearlie, but that it was based on love twisted by guilt and remorse, as Pearlie had hinted, seemed unreasonable. If that was so, why had she and Ward ceased to console each other? Why did Pearlie give herself in orgies of debasement at night in her parlor house? And why had Ward installed a woman in his rooms beneath Pearlie’s very nose, and dared her to interfere?
Serena met the gaze of the other woman, her blue-gray eyes clear. “You need not have gone to so much trouble on my account. I want nothing from Ward Dunbar. I promise you I am no danger to you.”
“Danger?” Pearlie jeered with a sharp crack of laughter. “Don’t you think I know that? I just wanted to make certain you didn’t misunderstand Ward. He sometimes lets his protective instinct run away with him, but it doesn’t mean anything. The shell he has built around himself in the past few years is too hard to be broken by any feeling so soft as love. I know better than to expect it, which is why we suit each other so well.”
Pearlie’s words remained with Serena long after the woman had swished from the rooms, leaving the heavy smell of patchouli hanging in the air behind her. She wanted nothing from Ward, Serena told herself, least of all love. There was no need for her to understand him, especially if understanding was going to bring with it this wrenching sympathy. Pity was an emotion she could ill afford, unless it was for herself.
(The strange twists and turns of the story she had been told seemed embedded in her mind. She could not stop thinking of it, of Ward as a young attorney with clients in Natchez in the state of Mississippi, but also in New Orleans since the cities were so close, where the civil code promulgated by Napoleon and adopted by the French had complicated legal matters for nearly a hundred years. Ward, of the Mississippi Dunbars, that old patrician family with deep roots in the South. He had denied it when she asked him. Did the scar caused by that abortive charge of murder go so deep? I was once a gentleman, he had told her with pain and self-loathing in his voice. Against her will, Serena began to realize his meaning.
She did not have long to consider it. Within an hour of Pearlie’s departure, there came a heavy tread in the hallway outside. The door shuddered to the pounding of a hard fist.
“Coming,” Serena called above the noise. She swooped through the sitting room, pushing her hair behind her shoulders in a useless gesture of tidiness before she pulled open the panel.
Otto Bruin stood outside with one fist upraised, ready to knock again. He grunted at the sight of her, his gaze dropping like a plummet to the length of her bare leg exposed through the slit in her wrapper by her haste. “Package for you.”
Serena twitched the material of her skirt into place, glancing at the fat, paper-wrapped bundle the apelike man held in one huge fist. “For me?”
“That’s what the woman from the dressmaker said. Got your name on it and everything. See?”
It was true. Slowly, Serena took the bundle into her hands. “Thank you, Otto,” she said, the words of appreciation automatic in her preoccupation.
“Is that all I get?” he asked, shifting to lean over her in the doorway, propping one shoulder against the jamb while he reached across to brace his hand on the other. “It’s not my job, carrying bundles up and down the stairs, you know.”
Serena sent him a cool glance. “I have no money, or I would be glad to pay you for the effort you put out.”
“Now you know that’s not what I want, girlie.”
“No? Well, I expect if you carry your complaint to Mr. Dunbar he will be able to take care of it. He — handles these things for me.”
She did not wait for a reply, but swung the door shut upon the hulking giant. At the sound of his muffled curse and retreating footsteps, she gave a small nod of satisfaction.
Taking the bundle into the bedroom, she placed it carefully upon the bed and untied the string that held it. The paper fell back from a mound of gray cheviot embroidered with small satin-stitched chevrons of dark blue. Catching the material up, Serena shook it out. It unfolded to reveal a walking costume with large leg-o’-mutton sleeves full to the elbow, then tight to the wrist. The standing military collar was edged with shiny blue satin, as were the reverse of the lapels. The skirt flared out into a bell that was smooth in front and gathered in folds at the back. With the dress went a plain linen underblouse, or shirtwaist, a pair of high button shoes of black leather, and a small toque of gray velvet with an upstanding blue ribbon cockade. As Serena reached for the hat, she dislodged another layer of tissue paper, revealing a set of cambric petticoats edged with lace that was threaded with pale-blue ribbon, a ribbon-trimmed chemise or corset cover, and a pair of lace-frilled, ribbon-trimmed cambric drawers. Beneath these was a cambric corset bag embroidered with a design of purple and yellow pansies. From it she took a tiny, waist-cinching corset in white satin trimmed with Irish lace threaded with ribbon. In the latest style, it had dangling ribbon garters to hold up the neatly folded silk stockings that lay at the bottom of the pile. Taking these up, marveling at their luster and sheernes
s, Serena discovered a square of thick white paper. The note was signed with Ward’s initials.
“Try these for fit,” Ward penned in a slashing scrawl. “I will come for you for our promised drive as soon as I pick up a rig from the livery stable.”
Serena hesitated, torn by the need to refuse any gift from Ward, especially something so intimate as wearing apparel, and pure feminine delight in the new clothing; between the impulse to refuse to fall in with his high-handed arrangement, and the need to be out in the open air. It was the prospect of freedom that overcame her scruples. She had been confined for so long that she could not bear to miss this opportunity to get out and about.
The dress was an excellent fit. The gray material with its touches of blue complemented her coloring, while the fashionably wide sleeves and lapels, and the high collar, gave her a regal, ladylike appearance. She could have used a buttonhook for the shoes with their scalloped holes. That the buttery-soft, elegantly pointed footwear had been included amazed her. She would not have expected Ward to notice how split and worn her old shoes were.
There was one problem she could not surmount. The velvet toque was designed to sit just forward of a hair style that was pulled sleekly back and drawn into a knot on top of the head. With only the one or two pins left to her, Serena could not secure the slippery silk of her hair in its proper place. The knot she twisted up slid this way and that, the escaping tendrils spilling down the back of her neck. In frustration she searched through Ward’s chest of drawers, hoping for a stray hairpin, a ribbon, anything she might use to hold it. There was nothing.
She was standing in the middle of the floor with one hand clamped to the ball of hair on top of her head when Ward swung into the sitting room and strolled toward her. He stopped in the doorway, sliding one hand into the pocket of his lounge coat.
“Not ready yet?” he asked, a quizzical look in his eyes.
“It’s my hair!” she exclaimed in despair. “I can’t do anything with it.”
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2 Page 100
