Toward Love's Horizon

by Michele du Barry

  The situation went from bad to worse. At least before they had been friends and companions, if not lovers. Now there was only the brief, dispassionate nightly mating. They saw each other at meals and made polite conversation. They were strangers drifting further and further apart, together only when he came to her room for the few minutes of required closeness. Scott had promised her a child and meant to fulfill that obligation.

  He never told her he loved her anymore, never called her sweetheart or Angel or anything else that she longed to hear. Why was it that when she desperately wanted to hear those words he retreated in silence? Why were his eyes cold and distant when she wanted them flaming with desire? Could she only appreciate him now that he was irrevocably lost to her?

  Angela laughed bitterly. She was in love with her own husband and he was in love with the ghost of her past. Her rival was herself—the way she had been long ago, and she couldn’t compete, couldn’t even begin to win Scott back from her passionate competitor.

  Jealousy ate into her and she continued laughing at the paradox, tears of frustration slipping down her cheeks. He didn’t want her the way she was today, but as she had been yesterday. And she wanted him in every way but the one way he desired her. If only she could remember! The old Angela could regain his love in an instant; the new one was helpless.

  thirteen

  “I’m leaving you.”

  He had her full attention now and her eyes were large jewels in the morning sunlight overflowing the room. She didn’t speak and Scott repeated the statement without emotion.

  “When?”

  She seemed serene and unruffled as if she had been expecting it and the only indication of surprise was the breathless little catch at the end of that one word. He admired Angela’s control for he had been sure there would be a scene. And perhaps if she had gotten angry or protested, like the woman he had known long ago surely would have, things would have ended differently. “Today. I’m all packed. I just remained to tell you.”

  “How thoughtful of you. You could have left a note.”

  Her words were cold and clipped, not in the least sarcastic, but there was no mistaking the dangerous tilt of her firm chin and he quelled the impulse to reach out and touch her. Instead Scott went on calmly, as if they were discussing the weather, with his heart as heavy as a piece of granite in his chest.

  “I won’t be back, Angela. It’s over.”

  She was dying inside, very slowly, with each indifferent word he uttered. And he didn’t even know it, couldn’t sense the shock and destruction each of his carefully detonated bombs wrought as they exploded, leaving her stiff and outwardly unchanged, bleeding and raw inside.

  “I won’t take the children. I think they need you more than they do me. But I will visit them occasionally and will have Robert up to Seafield for a few months in the summer....”

  There was no help for it, no way to stop him for he had made up his mind and he had made it clear in the past few months that he didn’t want her anymore. Angela had tried to talk to him and explain her feelings but he refused to listen—worse, he didn’t believe her.

  Once she had told him the truth, when she was all drowsy from being wakened in the middle of the night, and his body was hot and hard and naked against hers in the darkness. She had gasped out her love for him unable to stop the spontaneous outburst but he only put his fingers over her moving lips, silencing her. “Don’t lie, Angela,” he had said. “If nothing else, let’s at least have honesty between us.”

  So they had lived in a total silence. They were married strangers, reluctant lovers, nonexistent friends. Angela never saw him drunk again and hardly ever saw him smile. Only the children were worthy of his affection and she blamed herself for the entire state of affairs—and Jane. If she hadn’t interfered this would not be happening. Things wouldn’t have been perfect but at least Scott would have stayed. His guilt would have forced him to remain.

  “You are very adept at breaking promises.” The slight but furious flare of her nostrils gave her secret away.

  “Promises?”

  “Yes, you are free with your promises, but then I suppose all men are.”

  “All right, Angela,” he said wearily. “Say what you have to and get it over with so I can go.”

  “Once,” she whispered with the unshed tears running through her like a river, “you promised to love me forever, you said you would never leave me. To get me back you vowed to give me anything within your power, you bribed me with love and tenderness and understanding. Once, you swore you would never hurt me again.”

  Scott closed his eyes for just an instant and let the strident pain of the past sear his soul, course through every part of him. The torture was exquisite and he had become quite addicted to it, to the bitter regrets over his transgressions, to the guilt that could never be blotted out. The blame lay with him but he was tired to death of punishing himself for the past. It was over and done with and he could never go back and undo the damage. But he could and would go forward, and somehow, if he was lucky, he would overcome his ingrained habit.

  So he went on resolutely, knowing exactly how she felt and what he was doing to her, because each word he uttered severing their relationship was a blade turned inward upon himself. “You are right. I have broken every promise I ever made to you and I'm sorry. But the fact remains, we are not happy together.

  “If I stay I will hurt you and if I go I’ll hurt you. So I've decided to do what is best for me for a change. Make a clean break of it and try to pick up the pieces of my life and make it whole again.

  “You will never lack for anything—except my presence—and you will be free to do whatever you want. You may divorce me or not, it’s up to you. But I will give you ample grounds for it—”

  “With a hundred beautiful whores?” Angela’s smile was grim; pale, sparkling aquamarine eyes eclipsing her face as she suppressed an impulse to slap him. Instead she tore the splendid heart-shaped diamond from her finger and threw it on the floor at his feet. It winked at her like a conspirator and she couldn’t stop herself from continuing.

  “Have all the women you want—glory in them, crown yourself in them. Acquire willing harems that will cater to your every sensual need; not one of them will matter because they won’t be me. Every time you touch or kiss or lie with a woman you will compare her with me, and find her lacking.

  “You can leave me but it won’t matter. I will be in your bed and your house. I will follow you to Scotland and back. I will go horseback riding and sailing with you. I will eat with you and get drunk with you. I will cry and laugh with you. I will be with you always. You know it’s true. I'm in your heart and your, mind and your soul, and you will never be free.”

  She turned then and left the room and the air trembled with her quiet truths. He had expected a tempest, cloudbursts of recriminations, but there had been no thunder and lightning and the storm had passed from the scene without condescending to shed one raindrop.

  He clenched her ring in his fist trying to control himself, to keep from going after her. Everything she had said was true and they both knew it. He felt as if he had been keelhauled.

  “Oh, Angel, I love you more than life! I can’t live with you or without you! I might as well be dead—but then I still wouldn’t be free, for you would follow me to the gates of hell!”

  She rode and rode and rode but riding Apollo into the ground and herself into exhaustion could not exorcise the hurt or the need to strike out at someone. Angela had resisted the urge with Scott but now the reality of his desertion was becoming clearer with each passing moment.

  “It’s over—over! I hate you, Scott Harrington, hate you for doing this to me!”

  And why, when her vision cleared, did she have to find herself at Bentwood, sitting her trembling horse while the half-timbered house wavered between the trees? She had lived there once with Keith in dark ages past, Jane’s beautiful golden-haired brother, who was dead. They had told her about it and she believed
them, had looked upon his portrait in a shut-up room, but didn’t remember. And they never spoke of him—his life or his death—as if there was a terrible secret connected with both.

  But now Jane and Owen lived there. Jane, whose advice had precipitated this awful day. Jane and Owen who were ecstatically happy while she—

  The white stallion moved reluctantly through knee-high bluebells, the nimbus of the sun brilliantly outlining the interlacing branches, each tiny furled bud, every new leaf, the outstretched wings of a bird. Winter was over but not in her soul.

  She moved in a dream, the quick, sweet song of a willow-warbler barely brushing the fringes of her mind, her tiredness and despair no impediment to the inevitable outcome of finding herself in this spot. Delicate yellow splotches blurred against green. Why did daffodils always make her cry?

  The scene hadn’t changed, instinctively Angela knew that, but everything else had. Bentwood was the magnet drawing her on; apple-green vines climbing and cascading over mellow old brick, yellow and white ducks on a tiny, blue-mirrored pond, diamond panes of crystal and stained glass blinding in the morning light. Could it still be morning?

  Apollo drank thirstily from a trough and she dropped the reins unheeded into the water, crunched along a gravel path and opened the front door without knocking and without closing it. Jane was alone in her sitting room eating a late breakfast from a tiny table placed close to a new fire.

  “Angela!” Her smile faded but her surprise did not. “What’s wrong?”

  “He left me!” she screamed, her inner agony bursting forth in a torrent of words and a blind panic that obliterated every tie between them. “Scott left me and he’s never coming back!”

  “No!” Jane rose and started toward her.

  “Yes, and it’s all your fault! Friend—you call yourself my friend but you have ruined my marriage, my whole life! You forced your opinions and advice on me, you said it would work. Oh God, why did I listen to you? Everything was fine between us before you opened your mouth and interfered. It would still be the same, he would have stayed. But now I’m alone—because of you.”

  “Stop it, Angela, you will make yourself sick. I’m sorry Scott has left you and I’m sorry you think I'm at fault.”

  “Sorry, sorry!” Her outrage echoed down the halls and out the open door. “My life is over and you say you’re sorry!”

  The slap was a sharp retort in the suddenly silent room.

  Owen saw it all from the doorway. Jane, delicate and eight months gone with his child, with one hand on her cheek and the other on her swollen belly; Angela, a fury, bent on revenge, a friend turned enemy attacking his wife. He was across the room in an instant roughly shoving Angela aside, gathering a stunned Jane into his arms. And because all his concern was for his whitefaced wife he didn’t see Angela fall heavily against the sharply pointed edge of the desk and crouch stunned and speechless with pain before lurching unsteadily from the room.

  “I’m quite all right, Owen, but Angela—you must go after her!”

  “She can take care of herself. Why in heaven’s name did—”

  “Scott has left her. Perhaps it is partly my fault, but what does that matter now? She is upset and hurt, and I’m afraid of what she might do in such a state. Please, dear, go find her.”

  “Hell, no!”

  “Owen!” Jane admonished pushing him away and transfixing him with a determined sapphire stare. “I am fine but she is not. Do you remember what happened when Keith gave her that letter from Captain Carew? She wanted to die then, and this must be much worse because he has left of his own free will. Besides, she fell when you pushed her—here against the desk.”

  Her fingers came away wet and sticky and Jane went even whiter as she held them out to Owen. He turned without a word and left the room.

  Apollo’s mane was stiff beneath her cheek and each movement or breath sent a sharp pain through her. The reins had slipped from her fingers and the horse picked his way slowly and delicately through the trees, hesitating now and then as the light inert burden slid sideways, then righted itself.

  “Angela! Angela, where are you?”

  She opened her eyes in response to the faint call of her name but the effort was too much. Even the effort of clinging to the horse was too draining and Angela released her grip and slid to the ground. The purple-blue haze embraced and hid her, cool and damp and mossy. Little glints of light darted over her like dragonflies playing through an eyelet canopy. The Arabian nuzzled her shoulder with an inquisitive velvet nose.

  Owen found her an hour later in a bed of ferns and wildflowers blinking dazed and bewildered at the sky. “Oh, Angela! My poor lost girl.”

  Kneeling beside her he brushed the tangled hair from her face and began unbuttoning her blouse. Her fingers stopped him and her lovely, tear-bright eyes focused on his face.

  “Don’t, Owen.”

  “But you’re hurt and it’s my fault. I’m so sorry, Angela.” He touched her cheek and she started crying. “Come now, be a good girl. Let me see what has happened and then I’ll take you home.”

  “Just leave me here—I don’t want to go home—ever! Scott is gone and nothing will ever matter again!”

  “Of course it will. You are just upset right now—”

  Wild, hopeless sobs drowned the words in her grief and Owen stopped trying to reason with her and peeled the bloody blouse away from her ribs. Her side was bruised and the skin torn and bleeding. Touching it lightly he heard Angela gasp with pain and wondered if any ribs were broken.

  “Shh, sweetheart, pull yourself together,” Owen said placing the clean white square of his handkerchief over her wound. “Having the vapors now will only make it worse.”

  “I don’t care!” Prostrate and forlorn, between hard, hurtful sobs she gasped out, “I wish I was dead! Dead!”

  “No you don’t!”

  But as she lay there shaking like a broken, dying bird brought suddenly from a free blue sky to a hard treacherous earth, he thought, perhaps she did.

  “Angela, Angela—what am I going to do with you?”

  A brown ruffled head blocked out the braiding and unbraiding boughs, hard lips closed on her sobs forcing the hysteria within. His tongue found and played with hers, salt-wet and hot as if with a fever. And then Owen’s capable fingers found her unconcealed breast, his other hand holding her frenzied head still while he kissed and caressed her like a lover whose passion is just discovered.

  Sorrow still engulfed and convulsed Angela as she tried to elude Owen’s shocking demands. Jane’s husband—her friend! Good lord, what was he doing to her?

  But he wouldn’t stop, as if some desire hidden deep within had suddenly burst its bounds like a dam giving way, sweeping everything from its path. His attentions did nothing to Angela but make her angry and in a furious explosion she jerked her mouth free of his and slapped him back to his senses.

  She paid for it with an agony in her side that left her limp and hazily fighting for consciousness, while at the same time she was aware of the ashamed chagrin on Owen’s face, and an expression that was quite unfathomable in the sea-green depths of his eyes. Passing his hands dazedly over his face he took control of himself once again and proceeded to button her blouse back up over the exquisite flesh that had elicited this unthinkable dilemma.

  “You won’t tell Jane?” Owen burst out desperately. “Please, Angela, she must never find out about this!”

  Quiet at last, with fragile eyelids closed in her ashen face, she refused to answer him. With a sigh of regret he picked her up trying not to hurt her but she gave herself away with a tight arm around his neck that almost strangled him. And in order to avoid the jolting a horseback ride would cause Owen walked the mile to Bentwood with Angela limp and silent in his arms.

  “Send for the doctor,” he told the housekeeper at the door.

  “But he’s already here!” she cried as Owen swept up the stairs with his burden.

  She raced after him, passed him in the h
all, flung open the door of the best guest room and proceeded to whip back the covers an instant before Owen laid Angela down. A muffled moan jerked his gaze from the bed to the doorway and opened Angela’s weary eyes with surprise.

  “It’s milady. She’s having the baby.”

  “A month too soon!”

  “It is all my fault!” cried Angela aghast at the implications of her actions. She struggled up holding herself tightly but Owen’s voice stopped her cold.

  “Lie down. You have done enough damage for one day. I will send the doctor to you when he can be spared.”

  And she collapsed, suddenly boneless with remorse, to listen to Jane’s moans for the rest of the day.

  Tightly strapped, hardly able to breathe, sleepless with the screams in the hallway, Angela stared wide-eyed into the darkness. The candle had burned down, spluttered and gone out long ago, and she was so tired she couldn’t even reach out for the china bell on the nearby table to summon Maggie, who had hastily settled herself at Bentwood.

  The excesses of the day had burned themselves out also and she was emptied of all spirit and hope. Owen had made himself conspicuously absent but she had learned from the servants that the birth of his third child was not going very well. It was her fault that Scott was gone; her fault that Jane and the baby might not survive till dawn; her fault that Owen had undergone a metamorphosis from steadfast friend to frustrated lover.

  It seemed as if an unnamed curse overshadowed all her undertakings, as if she was doomed to failure and misery all her life. And the essence of this malison wafted from her person, touching and destroying the people she loved; her friends and those who moved within her predetermined orbit. She could agonize about it and her unpredictable actions within the depths of her soul, as she was doing now, but when the strange circumstances were happening she was helpless to halt them. Only afterwards could she see the havoc and destruction she wrought.