Night of the Candles (16 page)

“Yet he seems a gentle creature. As for his devotion to Amelia, I find it touching.”

“Do you indeed? I never knew you wished to be worshiped.”

Amanda sighed, wishing Nathaniel did not have this habit of bringing everything directly back to the personal. “I don’t wish to be worshiped. I don’t wish for anything other than respect and friendship … and … and to be valued for myself.”

He paused outside the door to her room and turned to face her, a serious look in his hazel eyes. He slid his hand from her elbow to her hand capturing it between both of his. “And is that all?” he asked.

She looked up at him, feeling the warm pressure of his fingers. She knew what he was asking, and yet she could not force the answer he expected past the tightness of her throat. “What … what else should there be?” She posed the question in the rather cowardly hope that he would help her, that he would make it unnecessary for her to have to say that terrible word herself. Love.

His face went still then he relaxed, giving her a smile with a hint of forgiveness in it. Leaning close, he brushed her lips with his, lingering for a moment at the corner of her mouth. When she made no move to prolong their embrace, he sighed, and pressing her hand slightly, walked back down the stairs.

She watched him for a few seconds as he disappeared from sight down the stairwell, then with a shake of her head, she turned the doorknob and went into her room.

A lamp burned on the washstand. Blackened logs smoldered sullenly on the firelogs in the fireplace. Seeing them, she moved to take up a poker and prod them into life.

When they caught, she turned her back to the blaze, and for the first time noticed that the daybed Marta had found for herself, and her own four-poster, had been turned down for the night. It was plain that Marta had come upstairs after seeing to Carl’s comfort in the stranger’s bedroom below, but where could the nurse be?

It was doubtful that she had returned to help Sophia with Carl in the kitchen. In the first place Marta was afraid of Carl, and in the second, Amanda was certain she had heard Sophia’s light footsteps going up the stairs minutes before she had decided to call it a day. Once out of Jason’s sight, it had not taken her long to finish with Carl.

There was no use worrying. Marta was a grown woman. She would come when she was ready. It was not as if she had any real right to Marta’s services as a nurse or a lady’s maid.

Moving toward the bed, Amanda lifted her hand to the top of her head, pressing the soft silkiness of her hair to find and remove the pins. As the coil began to loosen and slip onto her shoulders she rubbed at the soreness of her scalp where the pins had held her hair’s weight so tightly. When, she wondered, was she going to be well? When would it all end? For the moment, her single joy was the disappearance of her headache. Perhaps she could sleep the entire night away without waking. That would be worth something.

A frown drew her brows together as she unbuttoned her gown. It had been a long day and a distressing one, beginning at dawn with the nightrider and ending with her change of attitude toward her fiance. She was thinking of Nathaniel and their conversation outside her door. What was the matter with her? Why was she so stiff with him, so unable to respond naturally as she had before? Had she changed so much? Was it, as Sophia had suggested, that she had been trying to run away from him? Could whatever was behind her restraint have gone back that far? Or was it, perhaps, that her illness had changed her? That her surroundings and their strangeness had contributed to her lack of openness?

It was always possible that it was Nathaniel himself who had changed, yet, thinking back, she could see no reason to suppose that this was so.

When she had undressed, she slipped into her dressing gown, and taking up the hairbrush, began to brush her hair prior to braiding it. But then when the shining mass was smooth and even upon her shoulders she decided against the braiding. Already her scalp was tender, and any tension upon her hair might make her headache return.

She sat beside the fire for a time, reading. At last, when the logs had burned down to nothing more than a bed of red, glowing coals, she was forced to consider the fact that Marta had no intention of returning.

And yet, there was her bed standing ready.

Amanda stared at it thoughtfully. Marta had planned to come back. What had made her change her mind? Was it something Sophia had said? One of her veiled insinuations? It was not a very charitable thing to consider, but it was hard to ignore. Then again, it might be Jason’s order that held her back. He was not likely to approve a bodyguard for her in his home. The idea was, on sober reflection, preposterous.

What could she do, go to bed, ignore the absence of the nurse? No, if Marta was suffering under some prohibition, it would be best, both for Marta and for her own peace of mind, to go to her and try to straighten the matter out.

She laid her book aside and got to her feet. The swiftness with which she moved to the door seemed, even to herself, to give the lie to her careful rationalization. There was something more that tugged at her mind, a feeling of distinct unease, a feeling that made her listen carefully at the door before she turned the knob and pulled open the panel.

She glanced up and down the hall, noting that there was no longer a glow of light at the stab-well coming from the floor below. Everyone must have already come upstairs to bed. It was dark except for the light behind her from her own lamp and also from an open doorway on the right farther down the hall.

The other lighted room belonged to Sophia, she found as she passed the door. Though the woman was nowhere in sight, the dress she had worn that evening lay across the foot of her bed.

There were six bedrooms upstairs; four large bedrooms and two smaller back bedrooms lined three deep on each side of the wide, central hall. On the left, on the front of the house, was her own with Jason’s behind it. Beyond Jason’s room was the one Marta used. Across from Marta, the other back room had been allotted to Nathaniel. Sophia’s room was next on that side, and then that of Theo, on the front.

She hesitated outside Marta’s bedroom, gripped by the feeling that she was interfering in what did not concern her. Then as she heard the sound of heavy footsteps inside the room she raised her hand and knocked.

She thought for a moment Marta did not intend to answer. The footsteps ceased and there was a long silence. Then the knob turned slowly and the door eased open to a slit.

“Ja?” The single word was long, drawn out. Marta’s pale blue eyes stared fixedly through the crack.

“It’s just I … Amanda. Are you all right?”

Again that single word came. “Ja.”

Amanda’s brows drew together in a slight frown. She could not push in where she was not wanted, and yet something urged her to do just that.

“May … may I come in?”

Marta hesitated, then she stepped back just enough to allow Amanda to enter.

Closing the door, Marta turned to her, her face blank. Amanda reached out and put a hand on her wrist. “Are you sure there is nothing wrong? You … didn’t come tonight, and I was sure you were going to.”

A glazed look passed over the face of the nurse, as if she was concentrating on something which had nothing to do with what Amanda was saying. “Ah, my duty. I had forgotten. Fraeulein, forgive me.” She leaned toward Amanda, swaying forward.

An overpowering smell of raw spirits assailed Amanda’s senses. She turned her head slightly, taking a deep breath as comprehension came. The woman was drunk.

“Marta!” The word slipped from her lips, filled with reproach, before she could catch it back.

Marta’s shoulders slumped, and she raised one hand in a feeble gesture of helplessness.

Glancing around the room, Amanda saw a bottle, more than half empty, sitting on a bedside table.

“The drink … it was here when I came into the room. I … I could not help myself, fraeulein. Truly, I could not. I have had this weakness for some years … four, five … since that time…” she trailed off, looking away.

“How did it get here? Where did it come from?”

“I don’t know. I did not think. I was angry, a little, at that woman for ordering me about like a parlor maid. It was weak of me, I know. But I could not help myself. I will do away with it, I won’t drink any more. I promise you this, fraeulein.”

Her words were slurred, almost unintelligible. She tried to take a step, as if to reach the bottle, then she swayed, her feet planted, as she nearly lost her balance.

Immediately Amanda grasped her arm. Leaning upon her, Marta was able to shuffle as far as the bed. She sat down heavily, then reeled back against the pillows, her eyes closing. Amanda lifted her feet and then stood beside her, undecided what to do next, afraid the woman was unconscious.

“Ah, fraeulein,” Marta said, opening her eyes, moving her head from side to side. “It is a sad thing to be old and alone, without family, without friends. Life, fraeulein, is not worth the pain. All those I have loved are dead, those I have cared for have died … and I am to blame … I am to blame.”

She rocked her head back and forth, tears rising to her eyes, tears that were partly of self-pity, caused by the drink, but tears that were also formed by a true sadness, or so it seemed to Amanda.

“Secrets I know, fraeulein, terrible secrets I dare not breathe for my safety. I keep them all, my own and those the others lay upon me, knowing I cannot tell because I fear to go to the authorities.” The watery blue eyes fastened on Amanda and for an instant the nurse seemed to recognize her presence for she reached out to grasp her arm in sudden fright. “You will not tell that I spoke of the secrets. Promise me you will not!”

“No, of course I promise,” Amanda said soothingly. She could not understand above half of what the nurse mumbled.

“If they knew I had told, something horrible would happen. The horsemen would come for me. I would be blamed for all, everything. I am always blamed, always.” The nurse moaned, her voice fading, before a species of drunken anger caught her. “No! No, I don’t care what they say! The old lady … it was not my fault. And my poor, beautiful liebchen, if I had not had this weakness she … and the babe … But no, I must not think of that. I cannot think of that or I will go mad, as mad as that creature, that scarecrow with his candles.”

Marta’s fingers slid limply from Amanda’s arm, still Amanda did not move. “The babe?” she queried softly.

“My liebchen, Amelia’s baby.”

“You mean … she was going to have a child?”

“Ja. Ja, no one knew of it, only Madame Amelia and myself. Ah, poor liebchen, she was so afraid. She was so afraid that night and in such pain with her head. It was past bearing, and she was not brave, not strong. She begged me for help with tears in her eyes. And I … I could not help her, for all my skill. I could bear her tears and her entreaties for merciful death no longer. I came away here, to my room. That night, like this, there was a bottle waiting. I drank. My weakness overcame me. I thought once I heard her call to me, and I tried to go to her, but I could not, and in the morning she was dead.”

The horror of the pitiful tale held Amanda silent Marta stared up at her set face and her eyes grew wide.

“You … you won’t tell what I have said? You must not. Herr Jason would be enraged if he knew. I would be forced to leave. No one must know. Promise me. Promise me!”

“Yes, yes, I promise,” Amanda said to still the rising hysteria.

Marta sank back. “Sometimes … sometimes she comes to me, wringing her hands. Behind her is the other, the old one. They come in the dark of night and I must do something to … to…”

Her voice sank to a drunken mumble, and though she rambled on and on, Amanda could not understand the words.

She would have liked to offer sympathy or some kind of reassurance, but there seemed nothing she could say that the woman could understand in her condition.

There was no fireplace in the back bedroom. Amanda covered Marta with a quilt folded at the foot of the bed. There was nothing more that she could do, and so she left, closing the door quietly behind her.

She started down the hall, the heaviness of depression tugging at her mind. The things that she had learned made little difference. What did it matter that Amelia was with child when she took her own life, or that the nurse who was supposed to be attending her lay in her own room in a drunken stupor?

Wait. Was that true?

A woman with child usually had a heightened awareness of the value of living. Her most vital impulse was to protect her own life for the sake of the child, not to take it. The bottles had not appeared in Marta’s room by themselves. It looked suspicious indeed that Marta had been unable to attend her patient on the night she died.

Her mind was so filled with the things she had discovered that she started violently as a white form appeared in the darkened hall ahead of her. She stopped, one hand going to her breast, before she recognized Sophia. Theo’s sister wore her white dressing gown open over a thin nightgown. Her unbound hair, like spun cotton, was a fluffy cloud about her shoulders. She seemed unaware of Amanda as she flitted across the drafty hallway to pause outside the door to the bedchamber directly opposite her own. Smiling a little, she listened, then tapped softly on the panel before pushing it open. No light shone inside, an indication, surely, that the occupant had retired to his bed. This did not deter Sophia. Throwing back her hair, she stepped inside the dark room, closing the door softly behind her.

At the finality of that sound, Amanda drew in her breath. Averting her eyes, she moved quickly, silently, down the hall to her own room. She did not need to look to know which room Sophia had entered. It was the bedchamber of the ex-Confederate soldier, the widower of three months, the master of the house.

It was Jason’s bedchamber.

SHE did not sleep. It was not fatigue that kept her awake, staring up into the canopy above her where the glow of the slowly dying coals in the fireplace gleamed red-orange on the silver tissue cloth. It was a disturbed mind. The more she learned of Marta, the less she was inclined to trust the woman. For all the strength of her body, she was basically weak. She knuckled under to a stronger will, such as Sophia’s. Her affections were easily engaged, which argued a shallow nature. She apparently had no self-control, or it would not have mattered that a bottle had been left in her room. Amanda thought of the doctor and his insistence that Marta’s face was familiar and of Marta’s references to the death of the old lady. Had the doctor some knowledge then of the death of the elderly patient, a knowledge that Sophia shared since she appeared to have a hold over the nurse?