A Curse Dark as Gold (21 page)

"You think so?" Randall said. "I'd like to hear more about this plan of yours."

I drew back, my breath quickening. At that moment, a voice said, directly at my shoulder: "Those who listen at doorways never hear anything good."

Rachel gave my shoulder a friendly push and winked at me. "Get in there, then. I shouldn't keep that one waiting, if I were you." And, to leave me no choice in the matter, she reached over my head and pushed the parlor door open.

"Miss Charlotte, sir," she said, in her very best dutiful-servant voice.

Randall and Uncle Wheeler stood together by the fireplace, the flickering flames casting them into devilish red shadows. I could not read the expression in Randall's eyes; my uncle had his gentleman's mask firmly set. I looked from one to the other, wanting them to finish their conversation, baldly discuss my future there with me present.

My uncle set his glass down with a clink. "Charlotte, honestly. Do you mean to stand there gawp-mouthed and staring all evening? Mr. Woodstone will think you were raised by rustics." He turned to Randall. "I do hope you find her easier to manage than I have. I've found her quite uncontrollable."

Randall only smiled.

We passed the rest of our wait for dinner in an awkward silence, Randall kept trying to get close to me, but, still nervous and uncertain about what I had overheard, I pulled away from him, until at last we were off in the corner by the secretary. My uncle gave us a pointed glance, so Randall squeezed my hand and slipped away to a more seemly distance. I did not squeeze back.

I thought how different this meeting ought to be -- how friendly it would have been if my father had been here, instead of my uncle. More scattered and haphazard, perhaps -- Father seated on the floor amid a flurry of papers, detailing some scheme for Randall; Rosie and I tripping over one another in an effort to scrape together something edible; the sound of laughter and cheer throughout the Millhouse. If I closed my eyes, could I bring those visions to life?

I did not. My gaze fell instead on my mother's desk -- free now of dust and finger-smudges. Only a corner of paper peeking out from behind the drop-front showed anything amiss. I automatically reached for the door to straighten the paper. It was a letter, scribed in Uncle Wheeler's violet ink. But the hand was different -- strained, somehow, not his habitual florid sweep of ink across the page.

Glancing cautiously toward my uncle -- whose face was turned resolutely to the fire -- I reached back into the desk and drew the paper toward me. I heard a cough, and started. Randall, his eyes firmly on mine for a moment, leaned in toward my uncle.

"I say, Wheeler, you must have some opinion on the new filly at Crossbridge."

Uncle Wheeler was examining his brandy in the firelight. I held tight to the door of the desk as he launched into a detailed analysis of the horse's faults and virtues. Randall shifted casually, until to face him Uncle Wheeler must have his back to me.
I stared at Randall -- that must have been deliberate, hadn't it? Hastily, I read:

Sparrow -- by God, where are you? I have been up and down the countryside looking for you -- to the Flats, to Stowemouth -- even Yellowly! If you think this fox-and-hound game amusing, I assure you I take no such pleasure in it! I told you I would come back for you -- your brother couldn't keep me away from you forever. But perhaps you've forgotten me. Perhaps you've foresworn our love. Perhaps I was only a springtime amusement after all. When I left Ward --

It stopped, as if the writer had been interrupted. My heart lurched guiltily -- I was trespassing on something private here -- but I could not draw my gaze away. Was it possible that this note had been written by my own Uncle Wheeler? That last was smudged out, in a great angry blot like a bruise, but eventually I made out the word: Wardensgate.

"I don't know, sir, I think she'll surprise us all," Randall said -- a bit too loudly. My eyes flew toward him, and I saw that my uncle was turning. I had only time to slide the page back into the desk and lift the lid closed once more.

As we adjourned for dinner, Randall drew me aside. "I say, what was all that business in there?" He sounded merely curious, amused. I managed to smile.

"What would you say if I told you I was reading my uncle's love letters?"

His eyes flew wide and he suppressed a laugh. "I'd say you're starved for romantic correspondence of your own, Miss Miller, and I must remedy that." He swept his arm round my waist and kissed me briefly.

"Have you ever heard of a town called Wardensgate?" I said when he let me go. "I think my uncle may have lived there for a while, before he came here."

He frowned. "I've heard of it -- but, Charlotte, it's not a town. It's the debtors' prison."

Chapter Fifteen
My
wedding day dawned bright and chill, a fairy-frost dusting the hills and woods and turning the village road to silver. In my suit of cornflower blue plush, and clutching my nosegay of orange blossom, I was escorted through the village by a gay procession of my neighbors, determined to subject me to the full battery of Gold Valley superstitions: a sprig of ivy in my hair, sixpence in my shoe, a layer of linen gauze veiling my face, ushered round the church three times sunwise before being allowed at last to enter (left foot first). I was breathless and half-frozen by the time I wrestled the veil from my bonnet and collapsed into the pew beside Randall.

The ceremony was brief and tender. We rose between the benediction and the sermon to declare ourselves. I had a moment's panic when I uttered the words, "and all my worldly goods I thee endow," but Randall, while promising to love and cherish me, encircled my waist with his arms, and I felt a strange sort of easy peace, as if the Valley had given a great restful sigh. I sank back down into the pew, Randall's hand warm in my gloved one, and marvelled that my life could be so altered in no more than ten minutes' time.

Afterward we adjourned to the Millhouse for as lavish a wedding breakfast as Uncle Wheeler could arrange.

Randall's eldest sister, Rebecca, a cheerful, matronly woman who trailed her daughters behind her like ducklings, directed the affair with a brisk and competent air that even my uncle was forced to respect. Randall's nieces were sweet, stair-step girls who smiled shyly and called me "Aunt Charlotte" from the start.

I was torn away from my new family by the tidal force of my neighbors, laughing, kissing, and offering me their congratulations. I embraced Mercy Fuller and three young Fullers, all bedecked in their Sunday finery, and was seized in a massive bear hug by Jack Townley, who lifted me bodily from the floor.

As I shifted my hat back into position, I turned and came face to face with my uncle, who was dressed to fit the morning in ivory damask and an abundance of lace. "Well, Charlotte," he said in his lazy voice, "I trust you'll forget all about us here, now that you've caught yourself your banker husband."

I blinked, unable to tell if he was joking. But I just smiled and said, "Oh, trust me, Uncle, I shall
never
forget you." Impulsively, I embraced him. "Thank you, for all of this. It's lovely, truly."

I drew back and he smoothed out his coat and sleeves. "It's nothing," he said. "It's only my duty, after all."

As he slipped away into the crowd I wondered again about the letter I had read. Had Uncle Wheeler been in debtors' prison? The image I had -- of drafty dungeons populated by beggars in rags and ill-fed vermin -- did not reconcile with this powdered gentleman of refined manners and scornful disdain for modest living. Randall had me half-convinced I must have read it wrong. Surely it had said Warfield, or Woolston, or any of half a dozen things. And if it had said Wardensgate, that did not mean Uncle Wheeler had been an inmate there. Rosie, suspicions aroused, had gone back to check one night when our uncle was absent from the Millhouse, but had found nothing at all in Mam's desk but an empty ink pot.

As I was pondering these matters, Randall crept up behind me and caught me round the waist. I gave a squeak of surprise as he spun me in his arms and kissed me, in a fashion not at all seemly for a married couple in public. I felt my head swim, and pulled back, breathless. He was looking very much the country gentleman this morning, in a coat of dove grey, the selfsame ivy-and-orange pinned to his collar. I reached up to straighten the posy, and he regarded me solemnly.

"Charlotte," he said, his eyes searching my face for something. "Are you happy?"

I caught a glimpse of my uncle in the corner of the parlor, holding a glass of wine before him like a shield, and felt my face crack with the strain of smiling all morning. I clasped my new husband round his neck. "Yes," I said. "Oh, yes."

After much disentangling of ourselves from embraces and congratulations, we finally managed to quit town near sunset. Randall's father had sent an extravagant wedding gift: a glossy black carriage and two equally glossy black carriage horses, christened Blithe and Bonny by one of Randall's nieces. The thing had Uncle Wheeler positively in raptures. He examined every inch of the trap, extolling the virtues of the perfectly matched horses, the finely balanced axle.

"I say, you do know your way about a carriage," Randall said, giving Blithe's (or perhaps Bonny's) neck a friendly thump.

Uncle Wheeler slipped out from beneath the trap's polished undercarriage. His coat sleeves were shoved back, his wig askew, and he was almost smiling. "Yes, well." He took a moment to brush down his cuffs and melt back into his statuesque self. "Harness racing. The sport of kings."

Whatever Randall said in response to that was obscured by Rosie grabbing me and hugging fiercely, as if afraid to let go. She pulled back at last, beaming. Suddenly, urgently, I wanted the world to share what I was feeling.

"I'm going to make Harte foreman," I said, although it fell well short of all I really wished at that moment. But Rosie's smile grew even wider, so it was enough.

At last, our luggage loaded aboard the trap and our well-wishers growing weary, Uncle Wheeler took my hand and helped me alight beside Randall. "My dear." He nodded slightly. "Woodstone, I wish you well of her. Good day."

We took our honeymoon in Delight, a spa town in a part of the Valley known for its mineral waters. Alternatives were suggested -- Harrowgate, the coast, even overseas -- but Randall would have none of it.

"What?" he cried, scandalized. "Be the only man in Shearing who didn't take his bride for a honeymoon in Delight? No, madam. I have my pride."

So it was Delight or nowhere, and I must admit that I was not sorry to share the little pleasures of that lovely village with my worldly husband. Although I did point out that even the innumerable charms of Delight would be long exhausted by the end of our fortnight, he merely laughed and said I didn't understand the purpose of a honeymoon.

And, indeed, he was quite convincing about that; and all I shall record here is that we missed both breakfast and the luncheon buffet at the hotel our first day, and that I came to understand why so many young wives produce children three-quarters of a year after their weddings.

There are three things to do in Delight in winter: take the waters, sit in the Gallery at the Baths after having taken the waters, and shop. Even despite my looming mortgage payment, I let Randall convince me to release my tight grasp on a few pennies, here and there: the mantua-maker's shop, where I was measured for what seemed a whole new wardrobe; the staymaker's, where I was laced into my first new corset in years. I told myself I was spending household money now, and that I had a right to a share of it, but even so, it was a strain. Still, there is something to be said for shoes whose soles are still unpatched, skirts whose hems have not yet been stepped on or splashed with wool wash.

One afternoon we stopped in a fancy-goods shop to buy needlework supplies for Randall's sisters, and as Randall bent over a case of pretty little sewing tools, I drifted away to the display of threads on the far wall of the shop. Fine-spun crewel wool hung in a rainbow of hanks beside a row of silk floss in every hue. I put my fingers up to brush a skein of mazareen blue, but my hand stilled in midair.

There near the window, in obvious pride of place, wound about with their yellow monogrammed House of Parmenter labels, were a dozen or more glittering skeins of golden thread. I didn't need to look to appreciate their depth of color, their perfect sheen. I did not need to touch to know the weight and feel of that gleaming thread. I remembered Nathan Smith's reluctance last summer to touch the charmed gold. I understood it, now.

"My, that's pretty," Randall said, coming up behind me, "Emily will love this, Charlotte; don't you think?"

And what could I possibly do then but smile as my husband bought a dozen skeins?

Later that evening, Randall drew me aside before dinner and slipped an arm round my waist.

"What's this?" I said.

Randall stroked the blue plush collar of my wedding ensemble, which I had been wearing almost every night to dinner, it being my finest gown by unquantifiable yardage.

"Close your eyes." I felt him fasten something to my bodice, and when he lifted my fingers to his lips and bade me open my eyes -- I gasped. Pinned to my collar, just above my heart, was a lovely brooch of shining red enamel, hanging from a bar of gold like a jewelled cherry. My fingers trembled as I touched the gold scrollwork border, the engraved forget-me-nots, the glitter of a garnet at each floral heart. "But why?"