Jennifer Wilde

by Marietta Love Me

  It was almost eight. Perhaps he had already dined. He knew London extremely well. Perhaps he had a favorite restaurant. He must have many friends here. Female? Of course. Those glamorous older women, those depraved countesses. Why should I care? I didn't. Of course I didn't. No doubt he would come rapping at my door later on tonight to ask how my day had gone. I would be very cool, very polite. I sat down on the sofa, composing myself, waiting, and at ten o'clock I went into my bedroom and undressed, a quivering, tremulous feeling inside. Slipping into the filmy, pale golden nightgown, J folded my clothes carefully and put them away and then put out all the lights.

  True to her word, Tibby had placed the hot brick under the covers at the foot of my bed. I stared at the dark ceiling that was gradually mottled with silver as moonlight streamed into the room. The windows were open. A bell tolled somewhere in the night. Sleep wouldn't come, and it must have been well after midnight when I finally got out of bed and stepped over to one of the windows, resting my folded arms on the sill and gazing out at the city. London was lovely under a black sky marbled with silver gray, clouds floating slowly. Below everything was black and gray and dark brown with tiny yellow-orange squares where lights glowed. Steeples and spires rose, bathed in moonlight, the dome of St. Paul's a soft, silvery blur, Tower Bridge an inky black sketch against the lighter sky.

  The night air was cool, chilling my bare arms, and soft tendrils of hair blew against my cheeks as a cool breeze stirred. The curtains on either side of me billowed, lifting, falling, lifting again with a whispering sound. I searched the sky for stars, but none were visible. Would I ever see stars again like those gleaming in Texas? Such stars, such. ... I forced the thought from my mind. In the morning I would, begin the final journey. In less than twenty-four hours I would be in the arms of the man I loved. I had come so far, so far, and it was so close now. At last we would be together... but where were the stars?

  Thirty-Six

  Ogilvy nodded, smiled politely and swung the last trunk up onto his shoulder as though it weighed no more than a feather. He carried it out through the sitting room and clumped noisily and purposefully on down the hall. Dazzling silver-yellow sunlight streamed in through the bedroom windows. We were going to have a beautiful day for traveling, Ogilvy had assured me, and, indeed, the sky was a pale, cloudless blue-gray. It was not yet eight o'clock., I hadn't slept more than an hour or so during the night, and Tibby had brought me coffee and a buttered sweet roll shortly before seven, indignant when I refused a more substantial breakfast.

  I had dressed with care, had paid my bill, had left a generous tip for Tibby. There was nothing more to detain me. Ogilvy would be strapping the bags on top of the coach now and, in a matter of minutes, would be ready to depart, yet I lingered still, reluctant to leave the room. He knew I planned to leave this morning. Surely he was awake. Surely he would at least say goodbye. Was he so bitter he couldn't bear to endure that final courtesy? It didn't matter, I told myself. I would have preferred us to part as friends, but if he wanted it this way, it was probably best.

  Stepping over to the mirror, I made a final inspection of myself. My hair had been brushed to a coppery sheen and carefully arranged for the hat I had yet to put on. Deep mauve shadows tinted my lids, the result of so many sleepless nights, and a subtle application of rouge accentuated my high cheekbones and relieved some of the pallor. My lips were a deep, natural pink. Would Derek find me changed? Did I look older? Had the experiences of this past year left an irrevocable stamp? The eyes that stared back at me seemed a darker blue, sad, disillusioned, eyes that had seen far too much and would never again shine with that youthful sparkle of expectation.

  The gown, at least, was perfect. The form-fitting, deep black velvet bodice had a low, square-cut neckline and long, tight sleeves, while the skirt that belled out over half a dozen bronze underskirts was of the finest satin with narrow stripes of black, bronze, mauve, royal blue, and turquoise. The black velvet hat with its high crown and broad, slanting brim had a huge spray of bronze, pale mauve, and royal blue feathers spilling down on the right side, held in place with a turquoise bow. I put it on, fastening it carefully, pleased with the tilt that exposed a stack of sculpted copper waves on the left, three long ringlets dangling down to rest on my left shoulder.

  A bell somewhere nearby tolled eight times. I could delay no longer. Leaving the room, closing the sitting room door behind me, I moved down the hall. His door was closed. He was probably still asleep. I went on downstairs and through the lobby, stepped out onto the cobbled courtyard where (he coach stood waiting. It was a modestly elegant vehicle of light golden brown, two sturdy bays stamping restlessly in harness, their coats gleaming a rich reddish-brown in the brilliant morning sunlight. Ogilvy had strapped the trunks and bags on top in a neat pyramid, a large, unfamiliar basket tied in front. He was wearing fresh brown livery, and the heavy black cape spilled down from his broad shoulders. He smiled, opening the door, and I saw the plush interior with seats covered in heavy fawn velvet.

  "I gave everything a good goin' over this mornin'," he told me, "polished things up a bit. I took the liberty of bringin' a lunch basket, ma'am. There's no decent wayside inn 'tween 'ere and there, and I thought we might stop and eat by the road, give the 'orses a rest."

  "That will be lovely, Ogilvy."

  "See that little window up there, right behind the driver's seat? It opens up. You need anything, want to give me instructions or anything, you just open it and speak up. I'll 'ear you."

  "Fine. I suppose we're ready to leave."

  "Guess we are," he said.

  He smiled and took my hand, ready to help me inside. Jeremy strolled out of the inn and came toward us. Ogilvy released my hand and, polite and deferential, moved to stroke the horses' heads as Jeremy joined me, I looked at him, silent, not knowing what to say, and he was silent, too, gazing at me for a long moment with eyes that were no longer remote, eyes filled with tender emotions that belied the pain. The moment passed and still we did not speak, not in words. I felt as though an invisible hand clutched my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter, and there was a lump in my throat.

  "So you're off," he said, quietly, at last.

  I nodded, looking into his eyes. There were so many things I wanted to say, but I knew I would never be able to say them now. The hand squeezed my heart. I swallowed, forcing the lump to dissolve. Somehow I managed to compose myself and assume the polite, distant manner I knew would be my only defense against the emotions welling inside me.

  "I want to thank you, Jeremy," I said. "I want to thank you for all you've done."

  "No thanks required," he replied. "You finally convinced me to take half the money, remember? I've been well paid for services rendered."

  There was another silence. It seemed to last forever.

  "What are you going to do now, Jeremy?"

  "In a week or so I'm leaving England. I'm going back to America. There's a spread of land for sale in Texas, adjacent to Randolph's. Randy showed it to me, encouraged me to buy it, build a house, go into partnership with him, I told him I'd think about it,"

  "You're going to settle down?"

  "Figure it's high time," he said. "I can't think of a better place to do it in. You remember the land. We were there."

  "I don't think—"

  "That night, Marietta. After the wedding."

  The memory was a stabbing pain. I looked away from him, desperately striving to retain my composure. The horses stamped. Sunlight splattered the brown cobbles, bathed the front of the inn. Tibby had stepped outside, and Ogilvy had joined her near the door. They were flirting outrageously, Tibby twisting her apron in her hands arid looking up at him with a cocky grin and a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Three geese ran across the courtyard, honking noisily, the proprietor's small son racing after them. In control again, I turned back to Jeremy.

  "I'm glad you'll be in Texas," I said. "You'll be with friends,"

  "Randy, Chris, Em, too, for that matter. Look fo
rward to seeing them again. A man needs friends around him."

  "You're going to build a house?"

  "A big house," he replied, and a quiet smile played on his lips. "I'm a rich man now. I can afford it."

  "I hope you'll be happy, Jeremy."

  "I haven't given up," he said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I still hope you'll come to your senses,"

  "And—see what is in my own heart'.'"

  "That's right. I haven't given up. I'll be here at the White Hart for a week. I'll be hoping. I'll be waiting, Marietta."

  "Jeremy—"

  He touched my cheek lightly, the smile soft on his lips, his blue eyes tender, gazing into mine as he stroked one of the long ringlets that dangled down to rest on my shoulder. The polite, remote stranger was gone, and the man who stood so near was a Jeremy I had seen only rarely. I seemed to melt inside. I bit my lip, looking away from him again.

  "Goodbye, Jeremy," I said in a tight voice.

  "I'll be waiting," he repeated.

  I climbed into the carriage and settled back on the fawn velvet seat facing the front of the vehicle. Jeremy closed the door and moved back as Ogilvy told Tibby goodbye and came over to climb up onto the driver's seat. He said something to the horses and clicked the reins. The carriage began to move. Tibby waved from the doorway. Jeremy watched with hands thrust into his pockets, the heavy brown wave dipping over his forehead. I realized it was the last time I would ever see him, and there was another stabbing pain. I turned away from the window, unable to bear it, and soon we were out of the courtyard and moving down the street, in the thick of the morning traffic.

  London passed by the window, gorgeous marble facades, rows of shops, parks, slums, brown and gray, swarming with people, and I saw it all through a blur. I took several deep breaths, jostled about as the carriage clattered over a particularly rough stretch. The wheels made a lighter, whirring sound as we moved over a bridge, I could see the Thames below, the water a turgid blue-gray with several barges docked along the embankment like Oat brown boxes, bobbing gently. We passed several large warehouses, more slums, and before too much longer the city was behind us and there were trees and rolling green fields with sheep grazing on the horizon.

  I would forget him. As soon as I saw Derek again I would forget everything but the joy I had been waiting for for such a long time, i felt better now that we had left London. The worst part was over. It was only natural that I should feel this sadness, only natural that I should feel a part of me had been left behind. I had felt the same way when I had left Em in Texas, when I had left New Orleans and Mandy and Lucille. One by one the chapters of my life had been closing, becoming the past, and Jeremy belonged to the past now, too. The future was ahead, waiting for me at Hawkehouse, the future I had dreamed of and had come so close to realizing before it was brutally wrested from me on a dock in New Orleans. All that had happened since that night would cease to matter once we were in each other's arms.

  Ogilvy slowed as we passed through a small village. I saw tan stone cottages with steep thatched roofs, kitchen gardens with cabbages and beans, a blacksmith's shop, a pub of buttery yellow brick, thatched like the cottages, a painted sign swinging over the door. A hefty blonde girl in blue dress and apron carried a pail of milk across a yard. Three old women in shawls gossiped listlessly as they drew water from the pump in the square. A man led a cow by a rope, taking it toward a pasture. Beyond the village there were fields of hops, the vines draped thickly over wooden trellises that bowed from the weight. The sunlight was even brighter now, streaming down in dazzling rays, and a few fleecy clouds had appeared, floating lazily across the sky.

  I would learn to love this land. Eventually I would become a part of it, and I would forget that other land with its rolling plains, its rivers with cottonwood trees shading the muddy banks, its mockingbirds and the coyotes I had heard about but had never seen. That land was fresh and new and boisterous and demanded much from those who would dwell there. Jeremy would fit right in, I thought. He had the drive, the vitality, the strength to conquer that land. I could see him riding across a plain in his vaquero suit, the wind in his face, his hair whipping about his head. I wished him well. I wished him all the happiness in the world. I hoped he would find it, just as I had found mine.

  The carriage rocked gently from side to side as we covered mile after mile, the horses moving at a leisurely trot, their hooves making a steady clop-clop on the hard-packed road. The wheels skimmed with a whirring sound, and harness jangled. I could see the back of Ogilvy's head through the little window behind the driver's seat. How long had it been since we left London? Two hours? Three? I leaned back against the padded velvet cushion, remembering a much younger woman who stood on an auction block in Carolina, remembering the tall, severely handsome stranger who coolly outbid the blond man in buckskins and took her away in a wagon to a run-down plantation house surrounded by cotton fields. That seemed so long ago. It might have happened to someone else.

  I had loved him from the first, and I had tried so hard to please him, cooking his favorite foods, keeping the house shiny and clean and smelling of lemon and beeswax, polishing his boots, mending his clothes, loving him, wanting him so as I retired alone to my narrow bed each night. Embittered by a disastrous marriage, hating all women, he had denied the feelings I stirred in him until finally, unable to deny them any longer, he had taken me with brutal force, resenting me even as he acknowledged the love that burned fiercely inside him. He had never been comfortable with that love, for he believed it somehow diminished him and made him vulnerable. He had fought against it, had thrust me out of his life not once but twice, selling me to Jeff Rawlins and, much later, abandoning me after he had killed Jeff in a duel. But in the end he had come back, at last accepting the fact that he couldn't live without me.

  Mile after mile after mile, wheels spinning, hooves clopping, through another village, past verdant green fields, behind low, gray stone walls, low hills rising on the horizon, each moment that passed bringing me closer and closer to the man who still believed I was dead. Perhaps I should have sent a letter ahead of me, I thought, but no, no, this way was better. I wanted to be there to stem the shock, to see the joy in his eyes when he realized it was actually true. He would seize me. He would crush me to him. We would never, never be apart again, and I would make him happy . . . so happy. The green fields gradually vanished, merging into moors that stretched endlessly on either side of the road, grayish-brown grass taking on a pale lavender hue in the sunlight, stretches of peat like elongated black ponds.

  The sun was directly overhead when Ogilvy slowed the horses and pulled over to the side of the road. Ogilvy climbed down from his perch and, a moment later, opened the door for me and helped me alight. My legs were a bit unsteady. Ogilvy smiled and clambered up to letch the basket secured in front of the pyramid of luggage. The sunlight was warm. A faint breeze blew over the grassy moors, and there was a pungent, earthy smell. I could see part of an old Roman wall crumbling in the distance, the ancient gray stones streaked with rust and covered with patches of dark green moss.

  "We'll just stop for a short spell," Ogilvy said, hauling down the basket. "Give the 'orses a bit of a rest,"

  "How much longer will it take?" I asked.

  "Coupla 'ours, once we get goin' again. Plenty of food 'ere, ma'am, 'ard-boiled eggs, cheese, pork pies."

  "I'm not very hungry, Ogilvy. You enjoy your lunch."

  "Sure you won't join me?"

  I nodded, giving him a polite smile. He shrugged and took the basket over to the low stone wall.

  "Wish that Tibby were 'ere to share it. She's somethin', that one, tiny as a kitten an' just as playful. I plan to call on 'er as soon as I get back to London."

  Ogilvy cracked an egg and peeled it, and I stretched my legs, walking slowly along the road, enjoying the peaty smell of the moors and the strange, eerie beauty. There were more clouds in the sky now, floating slowly across the blue and casting purpl
e-gray shadows that floated over the moors. Two more hours, I thought. The full realization of it seemed to hit me all at once, and for the first time I acknowledged the apprehension I had been feeling all day long. It had been building slowly, steadily mounting. What if he weren't there? What if he. ... I forced the doubts from my mind, refusing to give shape to them, but a nervous tremor remained.

  We were soon on our way again, Ogilvy stowing the basket away and helping me back into the carriage, the horses moving at a brisker clip now after their short break. The moors gave way after a while, replaced by hilly terrain dotted with trees, and then there were pastures, a patchwork of brown and tan and yellow and green. An hour passed, ten minutes, twenty, an hour and a half, and I tried to hold the bewildering confusion of emotions at bay, tried to hold on to some semblance of calm. We reached the village. Ogilvy pulled up in front of the large, sprawling inn. I opened the tiny window and told him someone inside would surely be able to give him directions to Hawkehouse. He climbed down and disappeared through the door.

  I was tense now, so tense I could hardly sit still. Ogilvy came back out a couple of minutes later and climbed back onto the seat, turning to speak to me through the window.

  "It's outside th' village, ma'am, three or four miles. We'll be there in no time."

  I shut the window and sat back, fingernails digging into my palms as we began to move again. It seemed to take us forever to get out of the village, each minute an eternity. We passed more fields and a wooded area and then turned up a drive that went on and on and on until we finally passed through two thick brownstone portals surmounted by an ornamental black iron archway with a black hawk in the center, amid the curlicues. We were in parkland now, enormous oaks shading the grassy, rather unkempt lawns. A small herd of deer grazed serenely a short distance away, looking up with a singular lack of concern as the carnage passed. Ogilvy had slowed down. We seemed to be crawling.

  The drive curved, parkland giving way to formal gardens, equally unkempt, and I saw the house in the distance, a huge brown Elizabethan mansion with towers on either side, a fake battlement stretched between them, multilevel root's rising behind, a rusty-green in the sunlight. Dozens of windows caught the afternoon sunlight, reflecting it, and wide, flat steps led down from the massive portico. It was ancient and ugly, but, to my eyes, the loveliest sight I had ever seen. Flowers grew in wild, multicolored profusion in front of the house, and there were terraced gardens on both sides, ancient fountains splashing, trellises laden with shabby vines partially covering the walkways.