It was over in a matter of minutes. The released dogs, accompanied by small boys (Jamie among them), raced over the moor to recover the dead birds. Then we moved on to the next line of butts, about a mile away, and the whole process began again.
=By the end of the day I had made a considerable bag, a fact that did not go unnoticed. Both Miles and Ian—among others— complimented me. Ian was especially pleased, since the number of birds shot established the sporting record of an estate. A “good eye” was considered an enviable asset, and apparently I had been blessed with one. Having been treated like an outcast for so long, I reveled in my new acceptance as a member in good standing of the inner circle.
It didn’t last.
On the last day of the shoot, a grand party was thrown, much liquor imbibed, many toasts drunk. I tried to stay sober, for I was determined to get Sabrina alone before the evening was over. This crush of people seemed to offer an excellent opportunity. It did. With all the whiskey-quaffing and merrymaking no one noticed me slip away.
I waited at the bend of the stairs. I hadn’t meant to frighten Sabrina, but, thankfully, she recognized me before her indrawn breath turned into a scream. Pulling her into the small study, a room rarely used and certainly most unlikely to be visited on this night, I closed the door behind us.
Recovered, Sabrina giggled. “Page, you shouldn’t. I’m tiddly. I’ve had too much champagne.’’
“All the better to kiss you, my dear.’’
Our kisses were hot, passionate. I felt her body melting into mine, not with a passive submissiveness, but with a reciprocal feeling of desire. My hand went to the neck of her gown, pushing it down one creamy shoulder, half-exposing a white breast. I put my lips to it and she shuddered. She smelled of lilacs and spring and desire. My mouth moved to the dark, shadowy cleft between her breasts and my tongue licked the satiny smooth skin. She pressed my head closer, gasping and trembling.
Suddenly the door was flung open and I looked up to see Miles. His eyes were black with rage.
He tore Sabrina away. “You rotter!’’ he cried and, doubling his fist, gave me a blow that sent me crashing against the wall.
“Papa!”
“Be quiet, you silly goose. As for you . . .’’He shook his fist at me, crouched where he had knocked me, my head reeling, sick with anger and humiliation. “Blood tells, doesn’t it? If I ever catch you laying a finger on this girl again, I’ll kill you!’’
“I love her.’’ My voice choked. “I want to marry her.’’
“Marry her? Over my dead body!’’
The next day I learned that the Falconers were packing to leave. Miles had originally intended to stay through the duck season and had talked about it with much interest. But now, because of me—and there could not have been another reason—he was cutting his visit short.
I went to Ian and told him what had happened. “Without meaning to, it seems I have created bad feelings between you and Miles and possibly between you and Mother.’’
He inclined his head in agreement. “You have a penchant for acting first and thinking afterward, Page.’’
“That’s not true,’’ I protested.
“Threatened with school expulsion twice, caught in a raid at a brothel, and now attempting to seduce Sabrina. Can you blame Miles for thinking you wild and ungovernable?’’
“The accusation is unfair! Totally unjust! None of this would have happened,” I went on, “if Miles had given us his blessing. If he’d allowed us to marry, or at least to be engaged.’’
“I can’t see why that would make a difference. A gentleman, even if he is engaged, does not take liberties with his intended.’’
“Then perhaps I am not a gentleman,’’ I said bitterly.
He made no comment and his silence goaded me. “Can you honestly say that you-—or Uncle Miles—have never been in a scrape or acted in any way but virtuously toward the ladies in your lives?’’
The steady blue eyes wavered for a moment. I thought I detected a sudden faint flush on his cheeks. Had I hit on some hidden but embarrassing truth? If so. Sir Ian Ramsey Montgomery was not about to admit it—at least not to me. I had been caught flagrante delicto,—red-handed—and no argument, no verbal fencing was going to change anything. The best I could do was to retreat with dignity.
“That remark was uncalled for,’’ Ian said. “There is no point in making bad things worse.’’
“Exactly. I can get my belongings together within the hour.’’
“Perhaps that would be for the best,’’ he said. “Although . . .”
“Although the damage has already been done?’’ I finished for him. “The Falconers need not leave. I am sure you can persuade them to stay. Or perhaps Mother can, she is very good at smoothing things over.”
“I prefer handling the situation in my own way,” he said coldly. “I don’t see why your mother should be involved in this. She has enough on her mind at present.”
“Very well. But she will want to know why I’m going, and I can’t lie to her.”
“Tell her, then, but leave the Falconers to me.”
Mother did not scold, nor did she seem terribly surprised by what had happened.
“I know you think Miles is a despot, that all of us perhaps are despots. But you will look back on this someday and laugh.”
“Never!”
“I know,” Mother said, squeezing my hand, “it doesn’t seem likely now.”
We were having this conversation in a little sitting room just off her bedroom, which Mother herself had redecorated in flowered cretonne. The white painted furniture seemed spindly and fragile, even the roll-top desk at which she now sat, to say nothing of the ruffled slipper chair on which my resentful six-foot frame sprawled.
“What has Miles really got against me?” I asked.
“It’s not you, Page. Sabrina is the apple of his eye. He sees every suitor as a threat.”
“Not in the same murderous way he sees me. I believed him when he said he’d kill me.”
“He was angry. Look, darling”—she patted my knee— “don’t take it so hard.”
Hard. The word turned sour in my mouth. It didn’t matter that the situation was tearing me apart. My agony seemed such a little thing to her—to all of them.
“Miles has never liked me.” My mind kept going back to that look of monumental black rage in his eyes. “He said something curious, Mother. He said, ‘Blood will tell.’ ”
She got up and walked to a mirror, pausing there to tuck a stray lock of hair into place.
“Have you any idea what he meant?” I asked.
“No,” she said. But my ear was trained to every nuance in her voice and I heard her denial as a lie.
“You do.” There was a long pause. “Mother, was Beasley Morse really my father?”
She turned, facing me across the room. “What an absurd question. Why do you ask?”
“Is it absurd? People say I don’t resemble him in the least. And Grandmama—”
“What,” she interrupted, her hazel eyes narrowing, “has she been telling you?”
“Nothing outright. Little things—hints. She remarked that Father wasn’t of ‘our class.’ Surely Beasley Morse—”
“You mustn’t listen to her. She’s got an acid tongue. She didn’t like Beasley.”
“She may not have liked him, but I doubt she would have said ‘class’ unless what she said was true.”
“It wasn’t.” She walked back to the desk, picked up the day’s menu, on which she had been working, and frowned over it, as if something there displeased her. I was not fooled for a minute. She didn’t want to talk about my father.
“You must tell me the truth, Mother.” I said, slipping into my childhood address. “Because if you don’t, I shall go back to South Carolina and worm it out of Grandmama.”
She tapped her nails on the menu. I waited. Another few moments went by, and then, sighing heavily, she turned to face me.
“All righ
t. Beasley Morse was not your father.”
Her capitulation should not have surprised me, but it did. There was a small silence before I spoke. “Who was he, then?”
“Harry Page. A Georgian, a Confederate soldier. He was recuperating at Wildoak. I thought I was madly in love with him. Just as you think you are in love with Sabrina.”
“Not think, know.”
She ignored my comment and went on. “He wasn’t aware that I was carrying you. Nor was I when Aunt Carmella sent him away and told him not to come back. I never saw him again.”
“Didn’t you try to get word to him?”
“Yes, but it was wartime and my letter came back: address unknown.”
“What a pity.”
“Not at all. Don’t you see, Page, it was for the best? It’s what I’m trying to tell you. I was too young to know my mind. Carmella was right. I don’t think your real father and I would have been half as happy as Ian and I.”
“But you can’t be sure, can you?” I threw back at her, feeling suddenly deprived. I had a father I had never known, one I’d been kept ignorant of all my life.
“What nonsense! Of course I’m sure.”
Harry Page. That explained why I didn’t resemble Beasley Morse, why my face looked strange among the Falconers, why I was considered an outsider who had to “prove” himself.
“And because I’m a bastard, Miles won’t let me marry Sabrina?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Perhaps.” She clasped her fingers together, and then her mouth suddenly hardened. “You needn’t feel inferior to your Falconer cousins. Page,” she said. “Aunt Carmella’s mother was a professional ‘lady of the evening.’ ”
“What?” I asked, astounded, forgetting my own distress for the moment. “A whore, you mean?”
“In cruder terms, yes.”
“Wellll ...” I let out my breath. Revelations. Skeletons in the closet. Remembering the slight flush on Ian’s cheeks when I had hinted at his possible misdeeds, I wondered what he had done. What dark blotch had there been on the Montgomery escutcheon besides the seduced Lady Margaret? Illegitimacy somewhere?
“Ha!” I exclaimed aloud. “Ha!”
“Don’t preen,” Mother said.
“I’m not. What kind of man was this Harry Page?”
“A lively sort.” Her lips parted in a faint reminiscent smile. “He did make me laugh. But he was uneducated. One of a tribe of children. His father farmed, I believe.”
“Where?”
“He mentioned Fayetteville. You aren’t going to try to find him?”
“Doesn’t it seem perfectly natural that a son would want to find his father?”
“I think it’s rather futile. He might be dead, Page.”
“I’ll chance it.”
I wondered if I could ever make her—or anybody who could look back on a solid line of known antecedents— understand the feeling I got when I saw the family portraits in the Long Gallery, how those faces so like Ian’s gripped yet disturbed me. Never mind my distant ancestors. I was a stranger to my own father and he to me; a situation I intended to remedy.
By noon I was ready to go. The few acquaintances I had made who were staying on for the duck season expressed regret at my leaving. “We’ve such good shooting ahead.”
I agreed but claimed that urgent family business in Virginia made my imminent departure necessary.
There only remained Sabrina to say good-bye to. Earlier I had slipped a note under her door, asking her to meet me in the little room under the stairs. She knew I was going—it was no secret—and I could not believe she would disappoint me. If we were caught . . . well, what did it matter? The worst had already happened.
This time she was there before me. Her face was pale and distraught, her eyelids swollen as if she had been crying. I took her wordlessly in my arms and held her, simply held her, listening to her heart beating against mine.
“I’m sorry, Page. So sorry.”
“No more than I.” I grasped her cold little hands. “Sabrina, do you love me?”
“You know I do.”
“Then come with me.”
She withdrew her hands and moved away. “Page, you know that’s impossible.”
“Impossible!” I exclaimed. “All the Falconers, including my mother, seem to have an inordinate fondness for that stupid word.” I drew close to her again. “Why is it impossible?
I have some money. More waiting for me in a bank in Richmond.” To blazes with the horse. I didn’t care. “We could be married in Edinburgh. Or London. Then go back to Wildoak.”
“I can’t. My father ... I couldn’t do that to him. And it would break my mother’s heart.”
“They would get over it. Once we were married.”
“Page, it would hurt them terribly. I can’t be that heartless. I love them. To run off would be poor thanks for all the years of caring they have given me.”
“I will be caring too, Sabrina. For the rest of your life. I promise.” I moved to take her in my arms, but she shrugged away.
“No. I can’t. I can’t go against them.”
“You love them more than you do me.”
“Oh, Page, now you are talking like a boy.”
That was the last straw. Boy!
Rage, like a white-hot steel-tempered blade, shot through me. And for a moment I had the savage urge to throw her to the floor and have my way with her. Get her with child, the devil prompted, and then they’ll all be happy to have you marry and make an honest woman of their precious Sabrina.
I grasped her wrists. She winced, but I did not let go, fighting the demon in me before I spoke.
“Listen to me, Sabrina. I may have walked into this room a boy, but I am speaking to you now as a man. A man, do you understand? I’m tired of ‘impossibles’ and arguments that go nowhere. I don’t have much to offer you in the way of worldly goods—only a promise, a dream, my love, and our life together. You must make a choice. No, let me finish. There will be no waiting, no tomorrows. That’s all gone by the board. It’s now, Sabrina. Now. Once I leave I will never come back. Is that plain?”
She said nothing, her silent white face turned up to me in the flickering candlelight.
“What will it be, Sabrina? Me”—I tossed my head in the direction of the door—“or them?”
“Why do you make it so difficult?”
“Me or them, Sabrina. Choose. Yes or no.”
She stared at me, her wide eyes brimming.
“Me or them,” I repeated, tightening my grip.
“You’re hurting me.”
But I held on.
“I can’t,” she finally whispered. “I can’t.”
I threw her hands down. “Good-bye, then,” I said bitterly. “Good-bye, and I hope your future brings all the happiness you deserve.”
“Page ...”
I turned and left, slamming the door behind me, raging with a fury so great that, it brought hot, blinding tears to my eyes.
Chapter 20
My passage across the Atlantic was a melancholy one. Rage had been replaced by a sense of cruel, desolate loss, and for long hours I could no nothing but lean on the ship’s rail, gazing out at the metallic, foam-flecked sea. Past, present, and future coalesced into a vast panorama of unrelieved gray. At one despairing point I even considered heaving myself overboard, but the thought of being ignominiously fished out restrained me.
The purser, a jovial sort with black whiskers and ruddy cheeks, noticed the cloud of perpetual gloom that hung about my head. He urged me to join the card games and dinner parties organized for the first-class passengers, but I politely refused. Instead, when not leaning on the rail or pacing the deck, I stood watching the crowd in the steerage. Some fifty or more immigrants—men, women, and children—they appeared far more unfortunate than I. Norwegians and Swedes mostly, pale and frightened, some of them seasick, the poor souls endured the often rough passage in cramped quarters amidst heaps of shabby bundles, scuffed rope-bound trunks, and
cheap cardboard suitcases. Armed with nothing more than these paltry belongings and hope, which to me in my present state of cynicism seemed baseless, they were leaving behind the known and familiar for a strange and alien land. Their plight should have made my misery seem petty. But although the sight of their poverty and fear elicited my pity, it did nothing to lighten my mood.
I castigated myself a thousand times for failing to push Sabrina from my mind. She wasn’t worth it, I told myself, not worth a single pang. She had made her choice: she didn’t want me; she had chosen her parents. That being the case, I was well rid of her. I ought to be glad I would never see her again, glad that things had turned out the way they had.
But I wasn’t. Angry, perhaps, but glad—how could I be? Sabrina was part of me, interwoven with every fiber. Her name and face were stamped indelibly on my mind, her smile, her voice, her very fragrance, the essence of my being. The only way to stop loving her would be to cut out my heart.
I stayed on in New York more out of indecision than any particular desire, Wildoak no longer interested me. Nor did I have any wish to collect Ian’s gift in Richmond. I was not sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that whatever it was, it would have no connection with my family or the Falconers.
I had very little money, having refused to accept anything but the price of my boat fare from Mother. She had made me promise to write if I needed funds, but this I was determined not to do. Therefore, I took the first job I could find, loading and unloading freight in the railroad yards, menial employment that paid little for a long day’s backbreaking work. At the beginning, my muscles, unaccustomed to lifting, became painfully stiff. There were moments when, on the edge of exhaustion, I thought I would scrap the whole thing. But I grimly stuck it out, toughening up day by day until I could lift, carry, and shove hundred-pound crates as if they were goosefeather mattresses. The best thing about my work was that it took my mind off Sabrina for long stretches of time. The yard’s coal soot, the clouds of steamy vapor, the chug-chug shuntings soon marked the rhythm of my days. Nights I slept like a log.
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