He had long ago recognized the eejit he had been when he had walked away from her at Ballacharmish. Even then she had been infinitely desirable. Now, dressed in the finest silks and satins that money could buy, she looked like a vision from heaven. At the thought of her minus all her finery his heart banged against his ribs like a hammer. Naked, she would be the most beautiful sight on God’s green earth.
He said at last, knowing that to rush things would be to scuttle any chance he might have, ‘You know where to find me if you should need me, sweetheart.’
She looked up at him with gratitude and affection. He looked wonderfully strong, with his broad shoulders and deeply muscled chest. With Kieron as family and friend she would never be alone and she would never be unprotected.
‘I know,’ she said, a shadow of a smile touching her mouth. ‘I must go now, Kieron. Goodbye, God bless.’
He watched her cross Broadway, his thumbs hooked into his broad leather belt. He watched the Karolyis carriage emerge as if from out of thin air. He watched the liveried footman hand her in and close the door after her.
Would a woman who had known such a lifestyle ever be content being the wife of a stable-manager?
The Karolyis carriage clattered away in the direction of Fifth Avenue and he began to walk again. He wouldn’t be a stable-manager if Maura was his wife. They would leave New York for the wide open spaces of the West. He would buy a ranch. Build it up. Breed horses. They would live the life they would have lived if he had asked her to marry him a year ago.
He pushed his cap even further back on his thick curls and began to whistle ‘The Gypsy Rover’. Alexander Karolyis was nothing but an interlude in Maura’s life. And his sixth sense told him that it was an interlude that was about to come to an end.
Even though she knew that Charlie was aware of Alexander’s liaison with Ariadne Brevoort she couldn’t talk to him about it, any more than she had been able to talk to Kieron about it.
Charlie called round to see her as often as he had always done, although now he did so with deep and ill-disguised embarrassment.
‘I don’t understand it!’ he exploded suddenly one afternoon after they had just paid a visit to the nursery. ‘Alexander was happy as a king at Christmas, at Tarna. What went wrong?’
‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ she had lied, not able to bring herself to discuss Alexander’s weakness of character. ‘Perhaps he loves her and perhaps he never loved me.’
Charlie choked, unable to say to a lady the only words that sprang to mind. What Maura had said was hog-shit and both of them knew it. Alexander loved her. It had been thunderingly obvious right from the start. Alexander had always called him a knuckle-head, but if anyone was being knuckle-headed now, it was Alexander. And he was going to tell him so.
Henry had not been remotely embarrassed by Alexander’s behaviour, but he had been deeply distressed.
‘The main trouble is Alexander’s age,’ he had said, trying to present Alexander’s unspeakable behaviour in the best light possible. ‘Alexander is only twenty-two, my dear. He’s little more than a boy.’
‘I know.’
She was embroidering a nightshirt for Felix and was grateful that she had an excuse for keeping her eyes lowered.
Henry continued in his vain effort to explain away Alexander’s idiocy.
‘The real problem is that he didn’t sow enough wild oats,’ he said, not utterly certain of the truth of his statement. ‘He fell in love with the Hudson girl when he was eighteen and he was still besotted with her when he left for his Grand Tour. Then there was his riding accident and he was on his back for nearly a year. Then he met you.’
‘Yes.’
Henry remained silent, hoping that she would continue the conversation; hoping that she would enlighten him as to what had really happened between the two of them aboard the Scotia. She knew what he was waiting for, but even though he was her dearest friend, she couldn’t bring herself to speak about her meeting with Alexander.
She said instead, ‘No matter how few wild oats Alexander may have sown, it’s no excuse for what he is now doing, Henry.’
A spasm of pain crossed Henry’s lined features. He knew very well that she wasn’t referring to Ariadne.
‘When I initially spoke to you of the rumours being spread about the legality of your marriage I had no idea that it was Alexander himself who was responsible. I’ve told him that I think it’s iniquitous. And I’ve told him that until he publicly sets matters right he can no longer count me as a friend.’
‘He’ll miss you,’ Maura said bleakly, wondering if he was missing her, wondering if he was ever going to return to her.
‘You’re a damned idiot!’ Charlie said savagely to Alexander when he ran into him at the Union Club. ‘Why the hell are you fooling around with an old woman like Ariadne Brevoort when you have a wife like Maura?’
‘Ariadne is not an old woman!’ Alexander had riposted, his eyes black as pits, white lines etching his mouth. ‘She’s twenty-eight and it’s none of your damned business, Charlie!’
‘Anything to do with Maura is my business,’ Charlie averred stoutly. ‘She loves you and you’re destroying her. Why, in God’s name, are you doing it? You were blindingly happy at Christmas. We were all blindingly happy at Christmas. Now Henry is looking his age and then some and life isn’t fun for any of us any more.’
‘It is for me,’ Alexander spat tautly.
Charlie eyeballed him. ‘Liar,’ he said with utter conviction. ‘You’re no happier than Maura is.’
For a moment there was such misery on Alexander’s face that Charlie was sure he was about to admit to it, and to admit to having been an idiot.
Hammering the message home he said, ‘Fooling around when you have a wife like Maura is just plain crazy …’
Alexander gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Be your age, Charlie. We were “married” by a barely literate Irishman in the middle of the Atlantic. I doubt very much that Maura is my legal wife and …’
Charlie decked him.
He never knew afterwards who had been the most surprised, Alexander or himself. A sign of how stunned Alexander had been by his action was that he had made no attempt at retaliation.
He had merely heaved himself slowly to his feet, nursing his jaw, allowing Charlie to exit from the club amid amazed and admiring stares.
The one person who had no indication that things were awry with the Karolyis marriage was Isabel. Try as she might Maura could not bring herself to put her misery down in writing. Instead she wrote about the baby, about Kieron and about the war.
… I had truly never realized before how entertaining babies can be. Felix is six months now and he chuckles and makes singsong noises at everything. My main battle in life is in persuading his nurse that I am more than capable of bathing and holding him. She dislikes any interference and would be far happier if I never went near the nursery, but how can I not? He really is the most delightful little boy and I wish there were no such things as nurses so that I could be with him all day long.
Kieron thrives. Henry has come to respect his judgement on horse-flesh to such an extent that he now insists Kieron accompanies him whenever he goes to the races, which is nearly every day!
The war drags on. The rebels still hold the Shenandoah Valley and the figures in the last casualty list published were horrendous, 55,000 dead in one month alone.
The war news was grim enough without her also adding that she and Alexander were practically estranged.
‘I’m moving into a suite at the Fifth Avenue,’ he had said to her tersely.
‘Why? Are there people who won’t believe your ridiculous allegations while you continue to live at home?’
Her acerbity shocked him. Right from the beginning there had been none of the tears and the pleading that he had expected. If she had cried, and by the dark circles carved beneath her eyes he was sure that she had done, then she had done so in private. Why, for God’s sake? If she had cried in front of him
things would have been different. He could have comforted her; she could have said she was sorry for driving him away with her demands that he rehouse half of Ireland; he could have told her that he didn’t give a damn for Ariadne Brevoort.
He said tightly, ‘Nothing I’ve said is ridiculous …’
‘No. I agree. What you have given people to understand is not ridiculous, Alexander. It’s wicked.’
She had just come in from an afternoon carriage-ride and she was wearing a pale mauve, voile dress, the bodice tight and moulded to her hips, the smooth-fronted, long-sweeping skirt edged with deep ruffles. There was a heavy rope of pearls around her neck and her mauve silk bag, with an ivory clasp, had been made to match her dress. She looked a million dollars and he wanted to make love to her so much that it was a physical pain.
‘For Christ’s sake, Maura. If you would only try and understand …’
She did understand, and it was the understanding that was half-killing her.
She said staunchly, refusing to shift her ground, ‘I understand that you are repudiating not only me, but Felix.’
There was a hint of unsteadiness in her voice but he didn’t hear it. He was looking into her eyes. They were the colour of smoked quartz, tip-tilted, thick-lashed, far more beautiful than Ariadne’s heavy-hooded, slumbrous eyes, far more beautiful than any eyes he had ever seen.
‘I’ve no intention of ever repudiating Felix,’ he said thickly. ‘I simply saw a way of having … everything.’
Despite his almost overpowering masculinity he looked suddenly vulnerable, like a spoilt child who has insisted on having something that isn’t good for him and can’t bring himself to say he is sorry.
Ridiculously she wanted to put her arms around him and hug him and comfort him.
She said bleakly, ‘It’s impossible to have everything, Alexander. There’s a price to be paid for happiness. And we were happy, weren’t we?’
If he said yes, if he publicly said that he had been leading people on and that, of course, he was legally married, then he would be a laughing-stock. Things had gone too far, become too complicated.
‘We could be happy again,’ he said curtly. ‘As my common-law wife you would be accepted by male society and …’
With exquisite dignity she walked from the room.
He hadn’t blamed her. She was in the right and he was in the wrong, and he knew it. The devil of it was, he couldn’t for the life of him think how he had got himself into such a position.
When he had stormed from the house the day before Felix had been born his intention had been to attend the birthday ball at any cost, but it had never occurred to him the cost would be so high.
In inferring that his marriage wasn’t legal, he hadn’t, for a moment, thought about the consequences for the coming baby. And by the time he had done, it had been too late. Nor, when in a fit of guilt and shame he had made furious love to Ariadne, had he foreseen the consequences. Ariadne had not only fallen in love with him. She wanted to marry him. And, like himself, what Ariadne wanted she was accustomed to having.
‘But why should there be any problems, darling?’ she asked, laying nakedly on one elbow, her fingertips playing slowly across his chest and down towards his stomach. ‘You’re not married so you don’t need to be divorced.’
‘It isn’t quite as simple as that.’
Her hand moved lower, stroking gently.
‘The Irish girl shouldn’t be in the Fifth Avenue house. Can’t Kingston evict her?’
‘We underwent a wedding ceremony,’ he said, swinging his legs from the bed and standing up abruptly.
He didn’t want her practised fingers arousing him again. He enjoyed the knowledge that an alliance between the two of them would be more than acceptable among New York’s Old Guard, but he didn’t particularly want to marry her. He wanted to stay married to Maura. He wanted his relationship with Maura to return miraculously to its old, gloriously happy footing.
The sheets he had flung back revealed Ariadne’s heavy, ruby-red nippled breasts. She made no attempt to cover them. ‘But it wasn’t a real priest, was it? You said yourself that it was a sham. That you paid both him and the girl to enact a wedding that would give your father heart failure.’
Alexander reached for his pants. ‘I offered Maura money. She never took it.’
Ariadne laughed, genuinely amused. ‘Of course not, darling. Why should she have taken a few paltry hundred dollars when there was a much bigger prize in the offing? Look at her now, queening it in a Fifth Avenue mansion. You were unfortunate in your choice of peasant, Alexander. This one is bright, real bright.’
Alexander buckled his belt and reached for his shirt. For once Ariadne was right. Maura was bright. She was also beautiful and warm and loving and he wished to hell Charlie had never spoken to him about Ariadne’s birthday ball. If he hadn’t been so incensed at not being invited … if he hadn’t dropped those ridiculous hints to Willie Rhinelander …
‘So the first thing to do is to pay her off and get her out of Fifth Avenue. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Everyone has their price.’
He wanted to tell her to shut her silly mouth. He wanted to tell her that although she may have a price, Maura didn’t. He didn’t do so because he didn’t want the conversation to continue. He wanted the hell out so that he could think clearly. He picked up his shirt, tight-lipped.
Ariadne watched him, a smile on her mouth. There was a boyish vulnerability about Alexander that contrasted sharply with his almost over-powering masculinity and that was part of his charm. She knew perfectly well why he wasn’t making any response to her suggestion. Like all men he hated scenes and she could well imagine the scene that the Irish girl would make at being evicted from her palatially luxurious nest.
‘’Bye, darling,’ she said, blowing him a kiss as he prepared to leave the room.
The door closed behind him and she slithered down against her pillows, her smile deepening. An Irish peasant was no match for a Rhinelander. She would have the girl out of the Karolyis mansion, and out of Alexander’s life, before the week was over.
Henry Schermerhorn sat in the offices of the Cunard shipping line and said smoothly, ‘I would like verification of a marriage that took place aboard the Scotia last June.’
‘And the names of the people concerned, sir?’
‘Is that necessary?’ Henry asked irascibly. ‘How many people marry aboard ship, for land’s sake?’
The official didn’t know. It was a question he had never previously been asked.
‘Mr Alexander Karolyis and Miss Maura …’ for the first time Henry realized that he didn’t know Maura’s maiden name. It didn’t matter. Alexander’s name would be enough.
It was. At the mention of the name Karolyis the official knew exactly which marriage was under discussion.
‘And was the marriage performed by the captain, sir?’
‘No.’ Henry had prised the name of the priest out of an unsuspecting Maura. ‘The marriage was performed by a priest, Father Mulcahy.’
‘Then the first thing for me to do, sir, is to check that there was a Father Mulcahy on the passenger list. If you will excuse me for a little while?’
With a wave of his hand Henry excused him. He was beginning to feel exceedingly jittery. What if there wasn’t a Father Mulcahy on the passenger list? What if Alexander had duped Maura entirely? It was the fear of such an outcome that had prompted him to make the enquiries himself instead of asking a minion to undertake them. He tapped a gleamingly shod foot nervously. If Father Mulcahy was on the passenger list then the next step would be to verify that he was an ordained priest and not a poseur.
Ten minutes later the door behind him opened.
‘I have the information you require, sir,’ the official said with obvious relief. ‘Father Mulcahy boarded the Scotia at Queenstown.’
‘And so the marriage is legal?’
‘The captain has recorded it as being a legal ceremony, sir. He wouldn’t have count
enanced it if there was anything shady about it.’
‘No, of course not.’
Henry rose to his feet. The next step was to visit New York’s Catholic church. From there, unless Father Mulcahy had immediately travelled west, he would be able to trace the priest and confirm beyond all doubt that the ceremony aboard the Scotia had been legal.
‘Father Mulcahy is no longer with us, Mr Schermerhorn. He travelled to Chicago in March.’
‘But you know of him?’ Henry asked the black-robed figure.
The priest nodded. ‘Oh yes. He was with us for nine or ten months.’
‘And he is a properly ordained priest?’
The priest he was talking to was even older than himself and beyond being surprised by even the most ignorant of Protestant questions.
‘He is a Roman Catholic priest, duly ordained.’
Henry sighed in exquisite satisfaction. ‘I would like his address in Chicago. There is a rather important matter that I wish him to verify.’
The Cunard official stared in surprise at his middle-aged male visitor. ‘The marriage aboard the Scotia? But I’ve given Mr Schermerhorn all the information …’
‘I’m not here on behalf of Mr Schermerhorn,’ Ariadne Brevoort’s secretary said, unperturbed. ‘If you could give me details as to who performed the supposed wedding ceremony aboard the Scotia, I would be obliged.’
There were times when Maura wondered how she would live with the pain and the loneliness. Since Alexander had taken up palatial residence at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, Haines’s attitude to her had verged on insolence. The rest of the household staff were polite but distant. Felix’s nurse was no longer as dutifully subservient as she had once been, and had begun to object strenuously to the number and the length of visits that Maura paid to the nursery. When Maura had pleasantly reprimanded her for her attitude, the nurse had stiffly said that she was employed by Mr Karolyis and that she was carrying out Mr Karolyis’s wishes.
Maura had doubted it strongly but had no desire to broach the subject with Alexander. Their relationship was bad enough without destroying it further with petty domestic squabbles.
An Embarrassment of Riches Page 36
