Dear Impostor (21 page)

          “Then, if excessive losses did not cause your
fall, the only other reason–there must be some terrible scandal–”

          The expression on his face stopped her. Oh,
God, what was it? What had she stumbled upon?

          “I have committed sins enough, Miss Hill,” he
said, his words barely audible. “I do not need to march them out for your
inspection. I will play my part for your benefit, and my own, then I will leave
this house as soon as possible. And you need never see me again.”

          He turned and left the room with a swift
economy of steps.

          Psyche raised quaking hands to her forehead,
her mind aswirl with new implications and a headache of monstrous proportions.

          Psyche rubbed her temples and grimaced at the
pain. She took a slow breath, still chilled from the tone of his voice, the
look in his eyes. What had he done? What had
she
done, letting this man
into her house, giving him access to her young sister, her elderly aunt? Oh,
dear, oh dear. She must find some way to deny him time with Circe–yet how was
she going to explain it to the governess. To Circe, for that matter! Her little
sister could be so head-strong.

          She stood up, her knees still rubbery, and
headed for the staircase. She climbed two flights, and despite her wish to stop
in her own bed chamber and climb into bed, pulling the covers over her head,
forced herself to climb another flight to the nursery level and check on her
sister. She glanced into the schoolroom, finding it tenanted only by her sister
and the governess, both absorbed in a French lesson. Circe was reciting a
French poem, her expression abstracted, as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

           Psyche smiled in relief–no doubt the best
light of the morning had waned, and Circe had agreed to put aside her brush and
canvas for a while. She slipped out again and did not disturb them. She
descended to the next landing and retreated to her room; she would lie down for
just a while, and shut her eyes, and perhaps when she woke, this would all be
merely a bad dream . . .

          She spent the rest of the afternoon in her
room, somehow sure that Gabriel was also in retreat and would not trespass over
the bounds of propriety. She replayed their last interview in her mind; she
thought she had sensed hurt in him, hidden somewhere deep. There was that look
in his deep blue eyes–the way they darkened when emotion stirred within
him–though one had to look close to tell. He had perfected his insouciant pose
over the card table, after all, playing for stakes higher than she could
imagine. So she was probably wrong; who was she to think she could see through
this trickster, this impostor, this professional liar?

          It must be as she had first thought; he was
simply out for the money, the free garments–no, he had rejected her offers of
tailor and shirtmaker–then perhaps he thought he would enjoy a short respite in
a house of good reputation, while he waited for her uncle to release half of
her fortune so that he could be better paid than the original sum Simpson had
promised–no, no, Simpson had promised that money to the little actor currently
scribbling away in her bookroom. Nothing made sense; she could not find the
logic in any of this.

          Oh, lord, what a tangle. Psyche shut her eyes
again and tried to think of other times. Good times, before her parents had
been killed, and she had been thrust into this impossible position, with her
inheritance controlled by her uncle, with her person subject to Percy’s
unflattering courtship. She searched for a good memory, and a scene came to
her, all of them playing lawn bowls in the garden beside their country house,
her mother laughing, her father’s eyes bright as he claimed victory, and a
smaller Circe shrieking as she challenged his roll . . . Psyche relaxed and
drifted into sleep. But then the picture changed to the wide pasture and the
calm day when her father had tried out his latest toy, the hot air balloon with
the new valve which he was in the process of perfecting. And how he had, at the
last moment, cajoled his wife, laughing but nervous at the prospect, into the
basket with him.

          They had floated up, up, just over the trees,
and then suddenly the balloon dipped too low–her father seemed to be having
trouble with the controls–then a gust of wind sent the balloon careening toward
a tall oak. Her mother’s face was pale–even from that distance Psyche could see
how pale her mother looked, and how she turned to gaze down at Psyche, her
expression anxious, her mouth open in words that Psyche could not hear . . .

          Psyche tried to push away the vision, but she
was deeper into sleep now, and she could not prevent the images from unfolding,
as they had troubled her slumber so many times since that terrible day. Her
father shouting, the balloon suddenly seeming to collapse into itself, her
mother’s scream, Circe shrieking from behind her. Psyche herself had been
unable to yell or speak or move; she stood as if cast in stone and watched the
balloon fall to earth, the basket dipping on its side and the two figures
inside cast out like rag dolls, limbs flailing, to plunge toward the hard
ground.

          They all ran, Psyche and her sister, Tellman,
the other servants, ran frantically and Psyche dropped to her knees as she
reached out to embrace her mother, to steady her father’s crumpled body. But it
was too late. Her father had been dead when they reached him, his neck snapped;
her mother had lived until the next day, but she’d never opened her eyes, never
spoken to her daughters again.

          And then it was only Psyche, Psyche and Circe,
and the horde of sympathetic relatives, and the shock of her father’s will.

          Psyche forced herself up from the nightmare,
struggled to wake–too late to escape the memories–and found her cheeks wet with
tears. She missed her parents so much. It was so hard to go on alone, to bear
all the responsibility by herself. Perhaps that was one of the reasons she
struggled so hard to maintain her control over the household, over everyone’s
actions, her own actions. If she were unceasingly proper and took no risks,
perhaps danger would never swoop out of a calm, blue sky and destroy her life
all over again.

          And she was not the only one who had
nightmares; she knew that Circe sometimes awoke in the middle of the night
screaming, and her little sister no longer climbed up to the attic to paint in
privacy; the view from the tallest window made her stomach clench, she told her
sister, and she had fetched her paints and easels back down to the schoolroom. They
all had scars from the tragedy.

          Sighing, Psyche went to wash the tear tracks
from her face and then rang for a cup of tea. She could not go down to dinner
looking woebegone; she owed it to her sister to maintain a pretense, at least,
of calm. Besides, she knew in a distant corner of her mind that the rigid
self-restraint she had prescribed for herself was a shield, a barrier against
further hurt. No one would breach that wall of propriety, no one. Psyche could
not bear to be wounded so, again. Nor could she allow Circe to be hurt once
more. She would guard her sister from any contamination from this man with the
shadowed past. Somehow, she and Circe would come out of this darkness, and someday,
they would be whole again. To see Circe painting happily with a suitable
instructor, to be free of Percy and his wiles–just to get away from all her
worries–Psyche drew a deep breath and steadied her ragged emotions. She would
maintain her command of the situation; she would triumph over her uncle! She
would not give up, no matter how convoluted her quest for freedom seemed to
become.

          When Simpson brought the tea, Psyche drank it
slowly, and then it was time to change for dinner.

          “Have you been up to the nursery floor,
Simpson?” Psyche asked as her maid laid out an evening dress.

          “Miss Circe is just fine, Miss,” Simpson told
her immediately. “Tellman told me that man ain’t been up there at all today; in
fact, Miss Circe was asking about him, but Tellman set her to parsing verbs,
and your sister got so distracted she didn’t ask again.”

          Psyche nodded, and perhaps her relief was too
obvious, because her dresser added, “Don’t you worry, Miss. We’ll keep an eye
on that–that man; we won’t allow him to get too familiar with an innocent
child.”

          Psyche felt her eyes go damp in gratitude; it
was the dream, it weakened her hard-built defenses. She blinked hard,
determined to find her way back to her usual cool poise. “Thank you, Simpson. But
you haven’t said anything to the other servants to give away the imposture?”

          “Oh, no, Miss,” Simpson looked hurt. “I know
better. But the rest of the staff are alert, and they know I don’t trust him
yet, so they’ll take their cue from me.”

          Psyche nodded as Simpson brought out a pale
pink silk gown with a embroidered trim of tiny rosebuds around the modest
neckline and filmy sleeves; for a moment they were both silent making sure the
underslip slid over Psyche’s head without disturbing her hair, then Simpson
fastened the long row of tiny buttons on the back of the bodice. Psyche glanced
into the looking glass. For tonight, she had returned to her usual simple,
severe twist at the back of her head, with no frivolous curls around her face
to suggest a feminine weakness that a ridiculously good-looking male might try
to exploit.

          “Don’t you worry, Miss,” Simpson repeated. “We’ll
be on our guard, we will.”

          Her longtime servant’s loyalty again made
Psyche’s throat tighten, and she nodded. “Thank you.”

          When Psyche went down to dinner, she found
everyone very quiet. She and her sister and her aunt, and Gabriel, sitting in
elegant solitude on the other side of the table, shared an almost silent
dinner.

          “Thought you were going out to the theater
tonight, Psyche?” her aunt demanded, dipping a spoon carefully into her turtle
soup.

          “I sent a note telling Lady Carre I was
indisposed,” Psyche said, avoiding Gabriel’s eyes. “How is the soup?”

          “Needs a bit more pepper, I think,” her aunt
said, and fortunately, she did not pursue the question of why her obviously
healthy niece had canceled her evening’s plans, launching instead into the
possible benefits of a new recipe for stuffed hare.

          Afterwards, Gabriel sat down with her aunt in
the drawing room and showed her a new French version of Solitaire and made
himself agreeable to the older woman. Aunt Sophie seemed to relish his
consideration, and Psyche told herself she should be pleased that she did not
have to contend with his unwanted attentions. She played games with Circe, and
her sister went up to bed soon after dinner. Psyche sat down with a book,
occasionally glancing at the other two from the corner of her eye.

          What was he up to, now? She didn’t trust this
new air of serious domesticity. Was he deliberating avoiding her, or was he
currying favor with her aunt for some diabolical scheme of his own? She hated
second-guessing the stranger; it was bad enough to have to doubt Percy and her
uncle’s motives. She was tired of people who were not what they seemed!

          She turned a page quickly, trying to also turn
the directions of her thoughts, but found that she had no idea what she had
just read. She was glad when Jowers brought in the tea tray. She poured for
them all, and when the tea had been drunk, then she could say good-night to her
aunt, and to Gabriel.

          He bowed. “I wish both you a pleasant night.”

          “Not likely, with my bones aching the way they
have; too damp this spring by half,” the old lady grumbled. And perhaps her
words obscured the fact that Psyche had no answer for him at all.

          Or perhaps it didn’t. It seemed to her that
the actor–no, the gamester–missed very little.

          The next day was Sunday, and the three women
went off as usual to church. Gabriel excused himself due to the deficiencies of
his wardrobe.

          “But surely,” Circe argued, “God would not
care if your new coat has not yet arrived.” Her face had fallen when she found
that Gabriel was not accompanying them.

          “God would not, my dear,” Gabriel told her
solemnly, “but your neighbors might speculate as to my awkward situation, and
they would gossip. I would not wish to bring any shadow upon your sister’s
reputation, you know.”

          “Quite right,” Sophie said, nodding in
approval. “You can always spend the morning in quiet contemplation and prayer.”

          Gabriel’s brows rose, and his lips threatened
to turn up, but he controlled his expression at once. “Of course.”

          Psyche frowned at him; the man had no shame at
all. “We are going to be late,” she said. “Come along, Circe, did you find your
prayer book?”

          They hurried out. After the service, they
returned to Sunday luncheon, then Aunt Sophie retired for her usual afternoon
rest. Psyche took her sister out for a stroll in the park, determined not to
allow her to spend any more time than necessary with the impostor.