Amanda Rose (8 page)

Amanda knew that Susan was profoundly unhappy at that prospect—she had not the least vocation to be a nun—but what else was there for her to do? as Susan frequently asked. Without her family’s support, Susan had no money and nowhere to go. Her eventual fate if she left the protection of the convent would be too hideous to contemplate. Amanda sympathized strongly with Susan’s predicament because it was similar to her own, and the two had become fast friends. Over the years, Amanda had grown to love the other girl like a sister.

“Well?” Susan interrupted her musings impatiently. Then, looking behind her down the narrow stairs, added under her breath, “We’d better get inside. Quickly.”

Amanda opened the door and Susan followed her. After closing it behind them, Amanda crossed to the utilitarian washstand that stood against one wall. She had to do something about her appearance before one of the sisters saw her …

“
Amanda,
” Susan cried, exasperated, and when Amanda turned from sluicing her face with water to eye her blankly, she repeated in a long-suffering tone, “I
asked
you where you’ve been.”

“Just … walking in the grounds.” Amanda decided in that split second that she would tell no one—not even Susan, whom she knew could be trusted implicitly—about the fantastic events of the previous two hours. For one thing, she was fully aware that she held Matthew Grayson’s life in her hands; she could not jeopardize his safety by letting her tongue wag too freely. For another, although Amanda was not sure of the penalty for concealing an escaped murderer, she was pretty certain it would be severe, to say nothing of the social disgrace that would inevitably accompany discovery. She didn’t want to bring any more of
that
down on Susan’s undeserving head. Susan had had enough trouble of that kind already. And there was Matthew Grayson himself; he had killed before and, except for his promise, what guarantee did she have that he wouldn’t do so again? She would be no friend if she exposed Susan to a murderer, and one whose wits tended to wander …

“Oh, really?” Susan, who knew her pretty well, looked politely disbelieving. Amanda could feel her cheeks coloring—blushing was the curse of the fair-skinned—but she doggedly returned Susan’s look. “Well, if you don’t choose to tell me …”

“How did you know I was gone?” Amanda asked, hoping to distract her friend, who tended to be scatterbrained at times.

“Oh, Sister Boniface is looking for you.” Susan threw a scared look over her shoulder at the closed door. “When you weren’t in your room, she came to mine to see if you were with me. I told her you’d probably gone down to the library to get a book. I think that’s where she is now. What are you going to tell her?”

Amanda felt her heart sink. Sister Boniface was still her nemesis. Charged with maintaining discipline among the convent’s pupils, Sister took her duties seriously. The girls had dealings with her only when they were in trouble, which meant that Amanda knew her rather well. Before she could work out a plausible answer—obviously her tale of a predawn walk in the convent’s nearly nonexistent grounds was not going to do, if even gentle Susan did not believe her—a sharp rap sounded at the door. Both girls jumped and swung alarmed looks toward the door; it was opened with regal disregard for the privacy of anyone within. The tall, thin figure of Sister Boniface stood looking down her rather long and bony nose at them. A simple crucifix was held in her hands, and a severe frown was on her face, lending even more remoteness to a countenance that was unapproachable at best.

“Amanda,” she said sternly, her eyes passing over Susan to fix on the primary object of her displeasure. “I have been looking for you for the past half hour. Would you care to tell me where you have been?”

“Did you want me for anything special, Sister?” Amanda asked, desperately hoping that the question would sidetrack the nun while she thought of a believable tale. Sister Boniface, however, was made of sterner stuff than Susan—and Amanda’s brain traitorously refused to function.

“Certainly I wanted you for a particular reason.” Sister Boniface sniffed. Righteous indignation added a trace of pink to cheeks that were ordinarily as white as her whimple. “I would hardly seek you out otherwise. But we stray from the point: I want to know where you have been. At once, if you please.”

Amanda knew there was no help for it. She would have to lie, and Sister Boniface, who was nobody’s fool, would know it. But she had no choice.

“I went walking on the grounds, Sister,” Amanda said miserably.

“Indeed?” It was amazing how much skepticism Sister Boniface could squeeze into one small word, Amanda thought, and wished she could cover her telltale cheeks with her hands. She could feel them burning with guilty color. But of course that would clearly give her away.

“You may make your explanation to Mother Superior,” Sister Boniface continued coldly. “It is she, not I, who wants to speak with you. She said immediately you had risen, but I see that we will have to delay her further”—she examined Amanda with distaste, making her cringingly aware of the unconfined masses of her hair and her dirt-and-water-streaked dress—“while you put your person into proper order. You may meet me downstairs in Mother’s office in a quarter of an hour. I trust that will give you time to do something about your appearance—and think well on the sin of lying. I wouldn’t want it on my conscience.”

She watched Amanda closely as she spoke, looking triumphant as the girl’s color intensified until she was the shade of the cherries that graced the tree in the garden, then turned her austere gaze to Susan, who quaked.

“Come, Susan, you may assist me with my correspondence this morning before matins,” she said, turning. Her black habit billowed out behind her as she began to descend the stairs. Susan, after one despairing look at Amanda, trailed the nun obediently, closing the door with a gentle click.

Amanda stared at the closed door miserably for a moment, then allowed her unhappy gaze to wander around the room. Ordinarily her bedchamber, with its funny round shape, whitewashed stone walls, and small, uncurtained windows like portholes overlooking the bay, never failed to please her despite its unconventionality. She knew she was lucky to have this room, which had been used mainly for storage before her arrival. But she had seen it and fallen in love with it at once, both for its quaintness and for its isolation from the rest of the convent. Sister Agnes, sorry for the deeply unhappy child hiding behind a facade of bravado, had interceded for Amanda with Mother Superior. Otherwise, Amanda knew, she would never have been allowed to have a bedroom so far away from the other girls. But this morning was too much of a disaster to allow her to be pleased by anything. Mother Superior wanted to see one of the girls only when she had done something so monstrous that Sister Boniface felt she couldn’t handle it on her own authority.

For one horrible moment Amanda wondered if the sisters had somehow discovered that she had found and helped Matthew Grayson. But that was impossible, she was almost sure. She would have heard the outcry if he had been discovered. Another possibility was that someone in her family had died. Amanda brightened a little at the thought that Edward might have been called to his just reward. Mother Superior did call the girls into her office to give them such bad news from home. But, Amanda told herself glumly, she couldn’t be that lucky. No, it must be something she had done.

But time was passing. If she wasn’t downstairs in the allotted fifteen minutes, that would be one more black mark that Sister Boniface would no doubt convey to Mother Superior. Hastily she crossed the bare plank floor—rugs were luxuries the nuns didn’t allow themselves, although winters in Lands End were long and cold—to the wardrobe and pulled it open. She wasted no time contemplating the scanty contents; all her dresses were either gray or black and cut in the same unfashionable, modest mode. Withdrawing a high-necked, long-sleeved gray wool dress that was practically indistinguishable from the one she had on, she laid it across the narrow bed and began to strip off her clothes. The absence of her petticoat brought Matthew Grayson—Matt, she must remember to call him that—forcibly to her mind. She hoped he was all right … Shedding her remaining underclothes, she pulled on a fresh chemise and pantalettes, then another petticoat, before pulling the gray dress over her head. She only hoped that Sister Catherine, who did the laundry, would not notice later that one of her few petticoats was mysteriously missing.

Crossing back to the small mirror that hung from the wall over the washstand, she picked up her brush and began to restore her hair to some sort of order. The nest of tangles where Matt had held her made her grit her teeth as she raked the brush through it. Her hair was being more impossible than usual this morning; she supposed it somehow sensed that she was in a hurry. But at last she had it secured in two long braids, which she wound around the top of her head and anchored with pins. The resulting hairstyle was too dowdy for words, she thought, peering into the somewhat wavery mirror and completely missing the way the severe crown emphasized the delicate perfection of her features. Without her masses of hair to veil them, the jutting angle of her cheekbones and the clean, rounded lines of her forehead and jaw were plainly visible. The silky blackness of her slanting brows and thick lashes added a touch of the exotic to her candid violet eyes; her small, straight nose and tenderly curved lips still retained the innocent sweetness of childhood. Only the barely perceptible firmness of her chin and the deep, glowing red of her hair—a vivid contrast to her milky-white skin—hinted that she might not be as biddable as her age and sex dictated. Dismissing her reflection with a shrug to hurry toward the door, Amanda smiled as she remembered that Matt had called her an angel. If only he were free to repeat that observation to Mother Superior before she was raked over the coals!

Amanda just made it in the allotted fifteen minutes. As she knocked rather hesitantly on Mother Superior’s door she heard the clock in the front hall strike seven-thirty. The other girls would be saying grace before sitting down to breakfast. Amanda’s stomach rumbled at the thought. She would undoubtedly miss breakfast, she thought glumly, and she was hungry. Then she felt ashamed of her own greed as she remembered Matt saying that he had not eaten for three days. Feeding him was going to be something of a problem. She couldn’t very well make continued raids on the convent’s carefully husbanded supplies without someone noticing.

Joanna, a young novice who served as Mother Superior’s assistant while she waited to be allowed to take her vows, opened the door to Amanda’s knock. She was about Amanda’s own age, but there all similarity ended. There was a serenity about the round face beneath the simple white headdress that was utterly foreign to Amanda’s nature. Amanda supposed it was there because Joanna had her life all planned, along calm and unswerving lines; since the age of ten Joanna, the middle of three daughters of a wealthy wool merchant, had known that she was destined to be a nun, and she embraced the prospect wholeheartedly. Amanda could barely look at her without shivering. She would rather be buried alive than consigned to such a fate. So much of life was missing here in the convent’s gentle twilight, so many things to see and to do and to feel. Amanda practically quivered with impatience whenever she thought of the world beyond the walls that enclosed her. She wanted to be out there in it, living as life was meant to be lived. And one day she would, she vowed, no matter what it took …

“Mother Superior is waiting for you, Amanda,” Joanna reproved gently as Amanda simply stood staring at her. With a quick smile at the other girl, Amanda shook off her thoughts and entered the small antechamber that led to Mother Superior’s office. Joanna closed the door behind her and led the way to the other door; with her hand on the knob, she paused to say softly over her shoulder, “Sister Boniface is already with her,” before opening the door and announcing Amanda.

Amanda thanked Joanna with another smile for the warning as she walked past her. She heard the gentle click of the door closing behind her as her attention focused on the two women watching her from the opposite side of the room.

“Come in, Amanda, and sit down.” Mother Superior’s voice was truly beautiful, as Amanda noticed every time she heard her speak. Amanda obeyed the instruction slowly, moving across to the chair indicated by a plump, veined hand. Seated behind her desk, Mother Superior was small and round in contrast to Sister Boniface’s angular length as she stood with one hand braced on the polished wood surface. The expression on Mother Superior’s time-worn face was as different from Sister Boniface’s as her person. Whereas Sister Boniface frowned, Mother Superior smiled; whereas Sister Boniface’s eyes were disapproving as they rested on the slender young figure seating herself with unconscious grace on the very edge of the hard chair, Mother Superior’s were compassionate.

The older woman still bore discernible traces of the homely farm girl she had once been; Sister Boniface could never be mistaken for anything except a lady. Sister Boniface’s habit and wimple were immaculate in every detail, a stark contrast in pristine white and gleaming black. Her rosary was of gold and ivory. Long, slender fingers bore evidence of scrupulous care as they tapped with the faintest impatience on Mother Superior’s desk. Amanda knew that Sister Boniface was being groomed to fill Mother Superior’s shoes one day, and only hoped that she herself would be long gone before that happened. Mother Superior was kind and tolerant of minor misdemeanors. To Sister Boniface’s mind, there were no minor misdemeanors, only infractions of the rules. And, to make matters worse, Amanda didn’t think Sister Boniface had ever forgiven her for that kick.

“You … you wanted to see me, Mother?” Amanda spoke hesitantly. Sister Boniface’s lips pursed, and she frowned. Flushing, Amanda realized that she should have waited until she was addressed.

“Thank you for coming to me, Sister,” Mother Superior said mildly to Sister Boniface. “I will certainly keep all you had to say in mind.”