Night of the Candles (15 page)

It was not the most congenial company or, for that matter, the most congenial occupation, but Amanda was satisfied. She had tried to lie down alone in her room earlier, before supper, but she had not enjoyed being alone with her thoughts. They were much too disturbing.

She could remember nothing from the time she had sat down on the grass on the rise overlooking Monteigne. She could not remember letting down her hair or opening the neck of her dress. She could not remember playing with the dog. The very thought sent a chill of horror through her. She could recall none of the things she had said to Theo or Jason. Despite what Nathaniel had tried to tell her about her actions, her first cohesive memory was of him, nearly shouting her name at her, his fingers biting into her arm.

She could remember well enough what had happened after that — Jason carrying her, the terrible anger that had made his arms hard beneath her.

The emotion she had felt then was relief mixed with sadness, and she had fought back tears as Jason took her into the house. But there had been, too, a black fear. It was a fear that came, she knew, from the grayness that settled around her when the blankness entered her mind.

When she had tried to tell Marta how she felt and why she had been near tears, the woman had made soothing noises. “It’s only the concussion,” she had said. “It’s nothing to be afraid of.” Her normal, emotionless voice had banished Amanda’s fright.

She had almost been able to convince herself that Marta had to be right. Almost. Then she had found her hairpins. They had been placed in the handkerchief pocket of her petticoat.

She had held the pins in her hand, thinking back over the years. She herself had never been in the habit of keeping anything in the pocket of her petticoat except her handkerchief or, occasionally, a coin or two. But there had been someone who had always done so; someone who had a habit of stripping the pins from her hair to let the wind blow through her tresses, bringing them home in her petticoat pocket. That someone was Amelia.

From where she lay, Amanda could see Jason leaning back in his chair, his eyes half closed as he stared at the flickering fire, plucking the strings of the guitar. On a table at his elbow stood a glass half filled with liquor, and between pieces of music he would stop to refresh himself from the glass.

Near him Nathaniel and Theo sat over a small gaming table covered with green baize. The slap of cards and the murmur of their voices was a steady undertone to the haunting notes of the instrument in Jason’s hands.

Watching Jason from the corner of her eye, she seemed to remember that the sound of his guitar was concerned somehow with that other time, the time when she had awakened dressed in a nightgown not her own. But no, what connection could there be? It was only coincidence.

The fire crackled, there was a small snap of exploding resin, and a coal shot out onto the hearth and skidded across the floor.

Sophia jumped up and kicked the burning spark back into the ashes with the toe of her shoe. Then she glanced at Jason. “Can’t you play something a bit more lively?” she asked with a coaxing smile. “Something we can dance to?”

He looked up at her but it was as though he did not see her, as though he had to force his thoughts to return from far away. Sophia laid her fingers on his arm pressing slightly, and he smiled, a slow curving of the lips, and sat up straighter in his chair. Without speaking he reached out and downed another inch of the liquid in his glass. He settled his guitar more securely under his arm and began to play a measured, but still faintly melancholy, waltz.

“Oh, Jason!” Sophia exclaimed with a hint of reproach, but he only smiled again, a peculiar smile that served to irritate the woman beside him. She withdrew her fingers from his arm.

“Theo!” she called imperiously.

Her brother looked up. She made a beckoning gesture, her arms held out.

With a murmured apology to Nathaniel, Theo tossed down his cards and went toward her.

They moved away from the furniture grouped around the fireplace to the clearer end of the room, near the front windows. Theo took his sister into his arms, and they began to whirl gently around the floor.

But soon Sophia was not satisfied with only her brother for a partner. She coaxed Nathaniel with a brittle gaiety to the far end of the room.

The draft from Sophia’s whirling skirts, as she neared the back of the settee, made the petals of the paper flowers flutter to the floor. Amanda made a move to rescue them, then stopped. If Sophia could not spare a thought for her handiwork, why should she? Besides, to be honest, there was something about the woman enjoying the infectious rhythm of the dance, while she herself could not, that grated on her sensibilities. It was as if Sophia were flaunting her vigorous health, and Amanda found herself wondering how often in the past this tableau had been staged … the strange dark man with his proficiency at the guitar, the vigorous young woman with her abundant energy, the invalid Amelia on the settee? Was she imagining things if she assumed, on the evidence of only her own feeling, that it had been often?

Sophia seemed to be flirting with Nathaniel. They held a low voiced, and apparently amusing, conversation as they revolved around the small space. Once Nathaniel threw back his head and laughed, a startling sound from that more than ordinarily serious man.

Amanda found herself watching them over the back of the settee. She was not aware of any overt feeling of jealousy to account for her misgivings, and yet she was disturbed, more so, since now and then Sophia sent her a look half triumph, half expectation, as if she wanted some kind of reaction from Amanda.

Sophia cast a glance over Nathaniel’s shoulder, now and then, at Jason also. Absorbed in the music that flowed from his fingers, the owner of Monteigne seemed not to notice.

Moments later Amanda was forced to reconsider her opinion of the last, for stopping in the middle of a measure, Jason stood up. He moved to the sideboard where he added bourbon to his glass and then poured small sherries for Marta and Amanda. He set the glass for the nurse on the table, but Amanda’s he put into her own fingers.

Sophia sent Amanda a hard glance. “Jason,” she admonished. “We were not finished.”

He did not answer. He returned to his chair before the fire with his guitar across his knees, then lifting his glass toward Amanda in a salute he inclined his head, a tantalizing smiirk at the corner of his mouth. Lowering his glass, he began again the melancholy tune he had first been playing.

Sophia stared at him, her face hard as if she suspected a deliberate snub, then with a switch of her skirts she took Nathaniel’s arm and returned with him to the card table. With a faintly reckless air she accepted a hand of cards as Theo and Nathaniel resumed their poker game.

It was not long afterward that the last note of the guitar died away into oblivion. An intense silence fell. There were small noises, the flip of the cards, the hiss of the fire, the tick of the clock in the hall, the rattle of the beads on the table as Marta and Amanda searched among them for a particular shape or size. These sounds seemed only to emphasize the quiet, to draw attention to the currents of tension that flowed through the room.

Amanda leaned forward to hand Marta a short wire strung with beads to be twisted into shape. Their eyes met. Marta’s gaze slid to Sophia, and a queer, satisfied smile flickered across the nurse’s plain face. As she settled back she reached out and taking up her glass of wine that she had neglected until now, downed it in a single gulp.

Amanda was just beginning to think of the possibilities of escaping the strange atmosphere by returning to her room, when there came a scraping sound near the door.

Carl stood there, his hat in his hand and his sandy hair like strings of dust in the lamplight. He bobbed his head all around by way of greeting, one corner of his mouth pulled up in the travesty of a grin. With his rolling shuffle, he edged into the room and around the back of the settee to reach the fire.

“Must be getting cold out,” Marta remarked to no one in particular.

Glancing at her, Carl nodded, then squatted on the hearth, his cupped hands held out to the blaze. He brought with him the taint of woodsmoke from a hundred old campfires and a wild smell that came, possibly, from the cap of opossum fur in his hands.

Theo made a sound of disgust in his throat but Jason only glanced at Carl absently, unseeingly, and looked away again.

Amanda wondered, since Theo had been so violently against Carl when he tried to visit her in her room the night before, why he didn’t protest further. Then she remembered that Carl had the run of the lower floor.

The addition to their company did nothing to end the strain. If anything it increased it.

“I heard you playing the guitar, Jason. It has been a long time.”

With a start Amanda recognized the voice, that soft, near formless voice, as belonging to Carl.

“You play best,” he went on, “when you are half disguised … like now … and like that night.”

Amanda found herself staring at Jason. Was he disguised, half drunk? He certainly didn’t appear to be, but it was hard to tell. She turned back to glance at Marta for corroboration. Then, as she heard the rustle of her own clothing, she realized that the others in the room were gripped by a frozen concentration, waiting to see what Jason would answer.

The words came at last. “That night?”

“The night my Madame went away.” And then as if there was some connection in his mind he said: “I have been to the graveyard.”

Jason glanced at him sharply. “Why?”

“To see.”

“To see? To see what?”

“The place. The hole they dug for the box they put my Madame in. It is still there, the place, the pile of dirt they left, with the stone they put above her. But my Madame has come back. How can it be?”

“Jason!” Sophia exclaimed, “are you going to put up with this?”

“It’s monstrous!” Theo added.

Nathaniel sent a look of distaste and of disbelief to Amanda before turning back to Carl.

Jason ignored them all. “Listen to me, Carl. This woman is not your Madame, my wife. She is Madame Amelia’s cousin. Madame Amelia is dead.”

Carl stared at Jason. “She … she takes the place of my Madame?”

“No, no,” Jason was forced to answer. “Soon she will leave and go back to her home.”

Carl began to shake his head slowly from side to side. “No,” he said. “No.”

“I have told you the truth.”

“No.”

“I have told you many times…”

“No.”

Theo got to his feet, color high in his cheeks. “I’ve had enough of this! The man’s an imbecile!”

Carl rose up, and turning toward Theo, he stepped forward. “Not … not an imbecile.”

Sophia stood up and moved in front of her brother, sending Carl a brilliant and forgiving smile. “Come. Let’s not quarrel. You know, Carl, that you and Theo were always the best of friends before the war. Of course, he doesn’t think you an imbecile. Don’t even think of such a thing. It was a bad joke. Forget it, please. I expect you are tired. We all are.”

She turned to Maria, her hands clasped together in a gesture of housewifely competence. “Marta, if you will, see that Carl has everything he needs in the stranger’s bedroom.”

When Marta had put down her work and left the room to do her bidding, Sophia glided toward Carl and took his arm. “Come, admit you are tired?”

“Y … yes,” he stammered, though he sent Theo a far from imbecilic look from under his thick, sandy brows.

“And hungry too, I would imagine. Did you stop in the kitchen?”

He nodded.

“But I’ll wager Proserpine didn’t leave you dessert. She made a fig preserve cake this afternoon. Come, I’ll find some for you.”

It was not like Sophia to be so solicitous, Amanda thought as she stared after them. She felt uneasily that the woman had a reason. The most obvious one was to keep her brother from doing anything that Jason might disapprove of and at the same time, reinstate herself in Jason’s good graces by a show of compassion. Still, Amanda had a niggling feeling that there was more to it than that, though what it could be she could not say.

She busied her hands, her head bowed over her work as she allowed the minutes to tick by to cover the misunderstanding. Once she thought of what Carl had asked … was she going to take Amelia’s place? … and a faint blush stained her cheeks. She felt a pang of disquiet, then firmly dismissed it. She was silly to be embarrassed, and certainly mistaken to be disturbed by the suppositions of a man like Carl. However, the words seemed to linger uncomfortably in her mind.

At last her color returned to normal and she looked across to Nathaniel.

Jason seemed to sense her movement and almost as if he wanted to forestall her, he levered himself to his feet. “Would you care for another sherry? Or Nathaniel, would you like another drink?”

Nathaniel accepted but Amanda shook her head without looking at him as she threw back the quilt. “I believe it’s time I went upstairs.”

“Perhaps I can be of service?” Jason suggested, his face smooth and his voice holding nothing but a grave courtesy. “The stairs are steep … and you are a light burden.”

As she saw the trend of his words she was compelled to look up at him. “Oh, no … no.”

Nathaniel stepped forward. “I believe that is my prerogative, old man,” he said with a false heartiness, touching Jason’s shoulder.

Immediately Jason stepped back with a slight bow of acquiescence. But by that time Amanda had regained her composure. “I can walk perfectly well, if you will give me your arm, Nathaniel.”

As they mounted the stairs, Nathaniel said in a low voice. “Peculiar, most peculiar.”

“What?”

“This household, of course, my dear, but especially letting that mentally deranged fellow have the run of the place. I wonder why he does it?”

“Pity, I suppose.”

“It’s possible, though there are few people, in my experience, who would risk the danger for the sake of nothing more than pity.”

“Danger?”

“You heard him. The man, Carl — he has a positive mania about this cousin of yours. And he’s quite belligerent when he is provoked. You notice those hands? Strong. And he must have the constitution of a Missouri mule to live out of doors most of the time as he does.”