Enemy in the House

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “That’s beside the point, now.”

  He sprang up from the chair and went to kick the smoldering back log in the fireplace. It flared up in red and blue sparks. She could see his tall figure now, clearly. He was the same, she knew his every gesture, yet he was strange too, clad in his uniform, blue coat with buff facings and buff breeches and shining boots, his red hair pulled back, clubbed and tied with a narrow black ribbon after the new, sober fashion. Gilded epaulettes glittered on his shoulders.

  He said, staring down at the fire, “I wish I could help you. But I can’t prevent confiscation, Amy, as cousin or husband. I’m sorry—I’ve got to leave. It’s nearly night and it’s a long ride back to Savannah.”

  In another moment he’d be gone. Well, she had known that from almost the first moment of the interview, which had gone all wrong.

  “You must have something to eat, a hot drink before you go.”

  Suddenly he came to her and pulled her up, out of the chair. He put his arm around her and with his other hand tipped up her chin so he could look directly into her eyes. He was intent, frowning a little as if he was trying to read her very heart. “Amy, do you really want this marriage? It’s unwise, you know. A marriage of convenience. An arranged marriage. Would you have married a man your father chose for you?”

  “No!”

  “Don’t you see that this is the same thing? It may be very sensible. But I believe in marriage for love. In your heart, Amy, don’t you want to marry for love?”

  His voice and hands were gentle but his eyes were too keen. She turned her face and suddenly, without intending to, put her head close against his shoulder as if it were a refuge. He held her for a moment; she thought his arms tightened; she knew she felt the hard warmth of his face upon her own. Surely now, now the scene she had imagined was on the verge of coming true. His arms held her so close; surely it would be now.

  Instead his head jerked up. There was the sound of hoofbeats outside. He laughed softly. “Your relatives or Mr. Carey must be returning sooner than you expected!” His arms now held her merely as a gesture. She moved away from him. She’d been wrong, a fool, to think that something expectant, something about to happen had hovered between them for a moment.

  “No, it’s the parson, Dr. Shincok. And Lawyer Benfit.”

  “Old Shincok! And Lawyer Benfit? Why, my dear! Then you did mean marriage! Today!”

  Disappointment and a sense of irretrievable loss at once chilled her like a cold wind and sharpened her tongue.

  “What do you think I’ve been talking about?”

  “Well, but—I thought you meant at some future time. A betrothal only until—” he paused to listen again. A woman’s high heels tapped along the hall outside the closed door. A woman’s voice rang out, in musical and surprised greeting.

  “So you were prepared,” Simon said and laughed. He laughed so gaily that Amity unwillingly laughed too, although the joke, a wry one, was on her.

  There was the sound of voices, of feet shuffling in the hall, and China flung the door open and came in, bringing with her a stream of light from the candles in the hall. “Amity!” she cried. “Dr. Shincok and Lawyer Benfit are here and they say you told them to come—” She saw Simon and stopped. Her lavender corded silk swirled around her, her coquettish mull cap set off her lovely fair face, with its piquant little nose and baby blue eyes and her dazzling clear pink and white skin. “Simon Mallam!”

  Simon bowed and kissed the hand China dazedly extended. “Your most obedient, Madam. Let Dr. Shincok and Lawyer Benfit come in. Amity is doing me the honor to marry me.”

  China’s rosebud mouth fell open.

  Amity’s mouth fell open, too.

  Simon sent her one glance. “She is to marry me,” he said, “now, at once. She will then go to Jamaica.”

  “Jamaica!” China’s round eyes popped. “But Simon, surely Amity has told you that my husband is—may be—”

  “There seems to be only one way to make certain. If he’s alive, as indeed I hope he is, then Amity will find means to inform you. Pack summer clothes, Amity. You’ll find the climate warm. Tell Willie to get out the small carriage. He will take you to Savannah and bring it back.” He strode into the hall.

  China got her breath. “No—you can’t! Amity, you’re to wed Charles!”

  Simon had ears like a fox. He appeared in the doorway—grinning like a fox, too, Amity thought in irritated confusion. “No. Madam. She’s to wed me. And then go to Jamaica.”

  His gray-green eyes were bright with laughter but he meant it. It sounded like, indeed it was Simon’s side of the agreement and so Amity understood it.

  It was also so sensible a move that Amity wondered why she had not thought of it herself. But then she couldn’t have secured a passage from an American port to a British port. She wondered just how Simon proposed to do that.

  “Make haste, Amity,” Simon said.

  Then she thought, it’s true. She had intended to be Simon’s wife; she wanted it. Now she was to be Simon’s wife but he didn’t want her.

  2

  “IF ONLY CHARLES WOULD come back. He’d put a stop to this marriage,” China moaned, and swayed her plump, tightly stayed little body back and forth.

  Amity flung a dimity dress into her small trunk.

  “Why, you’re in love with Charles,” China cried. “He’s in love with you. It’s all settled.”

  “He’s not in love with me, and certainly I’m not in love with him. Nothing is settled or ever was.”

  “You’ve been playing with Charles, then. You led him on. And all the time you knew you were going to wed Simon.”

  “I did not know I was going to wed Simon,” Amity said with grim truth. She closed the trunk.

  “Amity, you cannot do this. I’m your stepmother. I forbid it.” China tightened her pretty lips and lifted her round chin.

  Amity gave China a half-indulgent, half-defiant look and reached for the diamond-framed miniature of her mother. China misinterpreted the gesture. “Oh, heaven knows I’m too young to be your real mother. Why, I’m only six years older than you—”

  “Nine,” Amity said and slid the miniature into the frivolously jeweled etui her father had ordered from Paris for her. “China, once I get to Jamaica we’ll know the truth.”

  “You’ve always insisted that your father is alive and well! You told me to pay no heed to Uncle Grappit’s horrid, gloomy talk!”

  Because of her youth China had always referred to her elderly husband’s sister as Aunt Grappit, and her brother-in-law as Uncle Grappit. It had seemed natural. Amity rather wished that her father had been a little less indulgent with his young and pretty wife.

  But then, it was easy to love and indulge China. “This is a way to make certain.”

  “I forbid you to marry without your father’s consent. And besides,” China said fretfully, “you cannot possibly be married in that dress.”

  Amity glanced down at her green challis dress with its small red rose pattern. “There’s no time to change.”

  “If you’re determined to do this rash, this silly thing—well, it is a wedding, in a hole-in-the-corner fashion, and there’s your pink brocade—” China ran to the wardrobe and said coaxingly, “You look so lovely in the pink brocade. It’s a ball gown, of course, but still—please wear it.”

  China could always change her tactics as swiftly and with as little apparent reason as a leaf floating on an unpredictable stream. China was a child. But a shrewd child. She was also irresistible. And in truth, Amity thought, it is my wedding, unreal though it seems.

  As the rustling silk slipped over her head she thought that it was strange that Simon should have changed his mind so very abruptly. The point was, though, that she had somehow, she didn’t know how, induced him to change his mind. So she was going to go straight ahead on her determined course and let nothing like scruples, nothing that had the uneasy prick of conscience about it, stop her. If there was to be an inevitable day of reckoni
ng she wouldn’t think of it now.

  She eyed herself in the mirror. The candle lights seemed to turn her dark blue eyes still darker, her black, smooth hair still blacker, with shining lights. The shimmering pink dress had wide skirts over vast panniers at the sides; the neck was cut low and square and edged with lace; in the back a Watteau panel swept from her shoulders to the floor. It was a stately dress but a dress for a ball, not a wedding. Still, Simon would not be ashamed of his wife.

  “Wait,” China said. “The fastenings—and your hair—”

  She then perceived belatedly that China’s little fingers hindered more than they helped, blundering and fumbling while China cast listening glances toward the window. She was of course listening for Charles, hoping for his return, or the Grappits’ return.

  Amity pushed away China’s hand, as it grasped for the powder sifter. “No. There’s no time. But thank you.”

  “I still forbid it,” China said puzzled. “Why are you thanking me?”

  Amity laughed. “Because you made me put on this dress.”

  “But you can’t go on with this.”

  “I am going on with it. Come, China dear. They’re waiting.”

  Her silk skirts rustled on the stairs. China followed her. “You’ll regret this, Amity.”

  “I don’t care! I’m going to marry him.”

  Candles were now flaring in the library, where she and Simon had sat and talked, and where years ago they had had their lessons—letters, arithmetic and the use of the globes, Latin taught by her father, French and dancing lessons from old Monsieur LeCoeur. Simon had had his canings in that room, followed always by a peace-making glass of Madeira offered by her father, who could never stay angry very long. Amity thought that Simon’s eyes lighted when he saw her. Suddenly shy, she looked away and then reminded herself that every man takes pleasure in seeing a pretty woman.

  At the last moment, with the papers ready to be signed, which she herself and Lawyer Benfit had prepared, making Simon the legal owner of any estates accruing to his wife, Lawyer Benfit balked.

  He was a saturnine man, with a sour, long face below his elegant white wig, and flashing dark eyes. He had quarreled with half the county at one time or another but he had a name for unyielding integrity just the same and he didn’t approve of secret weddings.

  “Being nothing but trouble,” he said, settled his snuff-colored broadcloth coat on his narrow shoulders with an angry jerk. “Why only today a poor girl wrote to me wanting help—couldn’t substantiate her marriage—husband married out of his class, refuses to recognize her. A very shocking case, indeed. Very painful. My duty is clear. I must establish the truth, see that this girl is established, too. Very difficult in every way.” He looked at Parson Shincok with thin-lipped distaste. “Parson Shincok will bear me out. I understand you advised her to appeal to me, Parson.”

  Parson Shincok’s red face emerged briefly from behind a glass of brandy he had already contrived to obtain. “Yes, yes—she wrote to me first and—but what could I do, sir? Clearly a man of the law—but very painful as you say—”

  His balloon face disappeared again. Lawyer Benfit permitted himself an angry kind of cluck. “The point is I’ll have nothing to do with a secret marriage.” He looked severely at Amity. “Where’s your uncle, miss? Where’s your aunt?”

  “Here’s China—my stepmother—” Amity said, taken aback by the lawyer’s fierceness.

  “But I don’t approve,” China cried, quick to take her advantage. “I don’t give my consent!”

  Simon ended it. “Sir, this is a perfectly legal and honorable marriage. We prefer it this way but of course we can elope, it has been done. I promise you on my honor”—there was a twinkle in his eyes but he was sober, too—“not to desert my wife.”

  “And you would elope,” Lawyer Benfit said crankily, eyeing Simon. “I remember you well, sir. Willful as a boy and now turning against your king. Oh, very well—very well—have it your own way.”

  The papers were signed.

  Dr. Shincok’s breath was redolent of brandy. His voice, however, was fruity and full as always and he remembered the right and solemn words.

  “… to love and to cherish …” Again Amity’s conscience stirred uneasily; the love in her marriage was onesided. Simon had intended to marry for love and he was being cheated out of that. But he would cherish.

  A ring slid on her finger; it was Simon’s carnelian seal ring. The parson had not brought the parish register from the church; Simon said something to him and the parson sat down at the table and wrote out a certification of their marriage in a wavering hand which Lawyer Benfit and then China, reluctantly, frowning over the pen, signed. Simon took the two papers and put them in his pocket. Servants peered in at the door, pleased and smiling. Old Jason, beaming, brought in an enormous bowl of syllabub and followed it with ham, turkey and the Christmas fruit cake. They were determined to give it at least some of the trimmings of a wedding and Amity felt tears in her eyes.

  After that it was all haste. She was in her own chamber, slipping off the pink brocade, pulling on a blue wool traveling dress, snatching up her red cloak with its great fur-lined hood.

  She was coming down the stairs again and Lawyer Benfit, apparently still disapproving of their sudden marriage and always a stickler for form, had scrawled a letter; he put it down on the table beside the door and Amity saw that it was addressed, Mr. Grappit, Immediate, with such impatience that the pen dug into the paper. “See that he has this at once, Ma’am,” he said to China. “And I wish him to know all the circumstances of this marriage.” He did summon up a grudging smile for Amity. “My good wishes, child,” he said. The servants shouted good wishes; Dr. Shincok, flushed and hearty, waved a glass of brandy at them; China’s lips were still tight and angry. The light, small carriage was waiting, with Willie holding the horses’ heads and Simon’s horse secured by a leading strap behind it. It was full dark, so she could barely make out the glints of gilt molding of the carriage doors, and its graceful, curved shape. Her father had ordered it from London.

  Willie let down the steps. Her small trunk was already hoisted to the roof. The breath of the horses made steamy plumes in the cold night air. Simon, a tall and now very quiet figure in his caped greatcoat, helped her into the carriage and then to her surprise said that his horse wouldn’t lead well; the roads were unsafe at night; he would ride beside the carriage. She saw him looking to the priming of a long pistol he carried; the carriage door shut. The lighted doorway of the house and the figures standing in the light disappeared. The carriage rolled away. As the night grew windy with a driving, sleety rain, it jerked and wavered and swayed on its great straps.

  She wished Simon were riding in the carriage with her. But then their marriage was forlornly unlike most marriages. It did not resemble anything her fancy had built up. Her fancy had been theory, the accomplished fact was altogether different.

  Alone in the carriage with the sleet rattling against the windows, she felt cold fact take over. Conscience came into its own and was merciless. She had forced Simon to marry her; she had seized the advantage of his obligation to her father and his loyalty. Even her motive which in theory had seemed sane and sensible now lost its validity, it became at best a sheerly mercenary motive and it was a poor best. Simon had intended to marry for love.

  So she had cheated Simon; in another way she had cheated herself, for in the circumstances she herself had brought about he could never love her, not really. She had been a fool. China had been right. Already Amity regretted her own headlong act. She huddled her red cloak around her but it brought little warmth and no comfort.

  They met no one that stormy night, no one stopped them; there were no prowling bands of riffraff, bent on taking advantage of the troubled times for a little private looting. Several times she knew that Simon had ridden ahead and heard some shouted words with Willie. She didn’t know when they crossed the boundary between South Carolina, settled and civilized, and the new, you
ng province of Georgia. The roads became rougher.

  She must have slept at last, for she awoke about dawn with a warm sense of having been cradled in someone’s arms, her head on someone’s shoulder. Yet when she struggled out of the mists of sleep she was sitting in a corner of the carriage, and Simon was sitting beside her. At her movement he turned, half smiling at her through the pallor of the gray dawn.

  “You’ve slept well. You didn’t even wake when we crossed the river. We’re in Savannah.”

  She leaned forward to peer through the narrow window. There were scattered lights around them. The carriage swerved suddenly to one side; a party of horsemen trotted quickly, somehow urgently out of the gloom and past them. Simon said, “Trouble. There must be news of the British ships.”

  “The British—”

  “They’ve been off the coast, headed south. We haven’t known whether they intend to attack Charlestown or Savannah.” He jerked open the tiny window above them and shouted at Willie. “Pull up, Willie. I’ll guide you from here.”

  She caught at his arm as he prepared to get out of the carriage. “Where are we going?”

  “There is a privateer, the Southern Cross, due to sail for Jamaica soon. If this news is bad she may be delayed. In the meantime I’ll take you to Madam Holiday. Her husband is my colonel. They’ll see to you.”

  Amity was now thoroughly awake; cold fact and conscience awoke, too. “Simon,” she said in a burst. “I was wrong! I shouldn’t have done this! I’ll not hold you to it. You can send me back now. Willie will take me—”

  “What you need is a good hot cup of coffee,” Simon said calmly and disappeared.

  The carriage lurched and turned and the lights grew more numerous. Groups of men, soldiers obviously, for their muskets made sharp lines of black, jogged hurriedly along the now cobblestoned streets.

  Actually she did not see Simon alone again till the night of the twenty-seventh when at last the privateer sailed. She stayed with the Holidays all that time and Simon was not even in town.