Night of the Candles (25 page)

“Perhaps, fraeulein, you imagined it?” she said, her tone flat, her face stolid.

The sound of someone clearing his throat came from the door and, as she turned, Theo stepped into the room from the outside hall. There was a faintly apologetic look in his eyes and a pale cast to his normally florid skin.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” he said when Amanda did not speak. “I don’t know what Marta has or has not been telling you, but I don’t think Amelia could have been with child. She was under a doctor’s care, was visited by him often. Such a thing could hardly have been a secret.”

“No? Not even if it was of short duration?”

“I find it hard to believe Amelia would have kept it from … us.”

Amanda stared at him. She had the impression he had been about to say “from me”; why should he have been privy to Amelia’s secrets?

“You see,” Marta was saying. “Depend on it, there is some simple explanation. It was likely something I said in my terrible English gave you the impression.”

Amanda knew it was not so, yet she could hardly argue further with Amelia’s personal nurse, someone who had been in the house when she died.

“Tell me what the trouble is,” Theo said. “What brought on this discussion?”

“It was … nothing.” For a moment Amanda had been tempted to explain, to tell Theo of her suspicions, before some inner caution took over, silencing her.

“Nothing?” Theo asked with a quizzical look in his eyes. But before she could form an answer, Sophia brushed through the open door and into the room.

“There you are, Theo. I wanted you to help me with the wreaths, set them out on the front porch ready to load into the wagon.”

“All right,” he agreed but made no move to comply.

“Well, Amanda,” Sophia said, turning to her with a bright smile. “So you will be with us for the ceremony tonight, after all. Who would have thought it on the night you arrived here? Certainly not I.”

“Nor I,” Amanda said.

“You will come with us to the cemetery? And you also, Marta? Father Metoyer has promised to say the Mass for the Hallowed Souls for us this year. It will be late since he has at least two other small country churches where he is expected, but we will not mind.”

“I don’t know…” Amanda began.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to pay your respects to Amelia. It is expected, you know. It will look odd to the others if you are still here and fail to come.”

“There will be others?”

“Oh, yes, a few, I’m sure. The Monteignes built the church, but it is for the community, after all, even if the congregation’s somewhat sparse these days. There will be a dozen or more people plus all of us, that is, if you and your fiance are coming?”

“Perhaps we will, just for the Mass.”

“Not for the Lighting of the Candles? Now, to me that is the best moment of all. Deliciously frightening but with a pious overtone.”

“Sophia…” Theo seemed to find something objectionable in his sister’s voice, but she merely smiled at him.

“First, we will eat, then have Mass, after which we will march through the cemetery with our candles and place the burning tapers on the graves. Some will depart then, most, in fact. A few will stay longer, lighting other candles from the first when it burns down. I have never, in the past, ventured to stay so long myself, but I thought I might this year.”

“It would seem to be quite an occasion,” Amanda said dryly.

“Yes, indeed. Proserpine is planning quite a picnic basket for our delectation.”

There was a strange glint in Sophia’s eyes, a sound of cracking glass in her voice. Amanda said, “I hope you are not going to any trouble on my account.”

“Oh, no. We do this every year.”

“We?”

“Theo and I. It is a family tradition, inherited from our Creole mother. Jason’s father, Monsieur Monteigne, used to come, sometimes. Jason is harder to persuade, but he has agreed to put in an appearance.”

“I’m sure it will be very … interesting.”

Sophia’s lips moved in a smile. “I expect you are thinking it will be grotesque, and you’re right, of course. But it also gives one a sense of kinship with those who have gone before. No one can tell you; it is something you must experience yourself. Now you will have to excuse me,” she ended abruptly. “I have a great deal to do yet.”

“If I could be of help…”

“No, no,” Sophia refused Amanda’s help before the words were out of her mouth. “There is no need.”

“I would help you, Sophia,” Marta said querulously, “but I’m not feeling at all the thing.”

“Never mind! Coming, Theo?” Sophia said and, turning, swept from the room.

“In a … few minutes,” he called after her, his eyes on Marta.

“Ach,” the nurse grumbled, getting to her feet. “I suppose I had best go and help her, or she will not be fit to live with.”

Theo waited until Marta had moved slowly, to show her ill health, from the room.

“Nathaniel tells me you will be leaving in the morning.”

“Does he?” she said, wondering where Nathaniel was if Sophia had come into the house so soon.

“Amanda?”

“Yes, Theo?” She brought her attention back to him.

“Are you certain this … this marriage … is what you want?”

Her eyes were clear as she surveyed him. “Why?”

“I wouldn’t like for you to … to be unhappy. I’ve seen enough of that kind of marriage.”

“That kind?”

“The kind where after the first excitement of the honeymoon is over, neither has anything to give the other.”

“You are speaking of Amelia and Jason?”

“Yes,” he answered simply, his eyes calm.

“Tell me, Theo, how do you know they were not happy?”

He was silent a long moment. When he spoke his face was hard with some strong feeling held in control. “I know because Amelia told me. The marriage was a mistake. We … I was in love with Amelia. Before the growth in her head was discovered, we were planning to go away together.”

Adultery. This then was Amelia’s great sin. Amanda could think of nothing to say. Vague questions and comments formed in her mind, but they were too personal to voice.

At last he went on. “You see, you are so like Amelia that I want you, at least, to be happy, to be sure the man you marry is the man who can make you happy. I don’t believe that you and Nathaniel are well matched. I may be wrong, but if there is any doubt, then be very careful. You might save yourself, your fiance, and the man who might someday love you, a great deal of sorrow.”

Though she heard him she could not attend. A question rose to her lips that she had to ask. “How could you? How could you do such a thing to Jason?”

He made a short humorless sound that was meant to pass for a laugh. “We are a pair, Sophia and I,” he said, turning his face away. “Each fell in love with someone we could never have. I with Amelia, Sophia with Jason. It was quite a family here while Amelia lay slowly dying. So much festering hate and cold despair. Not the least of it was guilt there was the look in Jason’s eyes, he blaming himself. And my own sister, quietly hopeful, and Marta, officious, driving Amelia mad with her fussing and self-importance and air of fellow suffering!” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Unbearable, truly, it was unbearable.”

“Why do you stay, now she is gone?” What had prompted that, a desire to rub salt into the wound?

“I stay because … because it is only three months, and something of her lingers. She lived here. She sat in that chair, slept in the room upstairs … I can picture her standing there, like you, before the fire. Where else could I find as much?”

“You look Jason in the face each morning.”

“He had her over two years!”

“Was the child yours?”

There. That was the burning issue, and it was better to blurt it out than to wait for better words or a better moment, and lose the courage to ask.

“I told you. I know of no child.”

“Nor do I!”

That harsh voice came from the doorway, and Amanda swung toward it, the color draining from her face. She caught her bottom lip before she said, “You weren’t gone long.”

Jason refused the ploy. He had no intention of covering the subject that lay between them with polite conversation. His face twisted with contempt. “Not long enough, it seems. If I had known you needed the information, I could have stopped to tell you how far I was riding and when I would return.”

“I’m sorry. I…” But she was interrupted.

“Curiosity, wasn’t it? You could not stand to let it lie. You had to stir it all up again.”

“That’s hardly fair! Amelia was my cousin. Would you deny me the truth about her death?”

“The truth? You have the truth,” he grated, anger and a kind of desperate pain flaring in his eyes.

“Do I? I can’t accept that. I won’t accept that … unless you want to be a martyr, Jason?”

He stared at her, his green eyes like stone, and then he sighed, lifting one hand to run it over his hair to the back of his neck. “No,” he said, his voice low, almost husky. “Forgive me, Amanda, for lashing out at you. It’s not your fault.”

She would not be disarmed by gentleness. “You are not the only person who might have killed my cousin. Any one of the people in this house might have done it.”

“The fact remains…”

“Does it?” she said scornfully. “Are you willing to take the word of a woman who would lie about a thing so important as an expected child against your own memory? If you will, then I have no choice but to suppose you want to be blamed for Amelia’s death because you feel guilty!”

Theo turned on his heel and left the room. Amanda glanced at his stiff back. She supposed he was hurt that she could have included him in her sweeping denunciation, or perhaps he wished to avoid confronting Jason and hoped he had not heard enough of Amanda’s and his conversation to demand his return.

“So,” Jason said when the door had closed behind him. “You would save me from myself? Why, I wonder?”

So did she. Made wary by the quiet, gentle tone of his voice, she searched his face for some sign of his mood. The things she knew about him, his household, and his relationship with her cousin, tumbled through her mind, and yet, unlike her talk with Theo, she could not bring out the truth unmindful of his pride.

A part of her distress and indecision must have shown in her eyes and in her hands clasped together at her waist for he gave a silent laugh. “Don’t trouble yourself, Amanda. There is nothing you need tell me, nothing to hide from me. You see, I know.”

“You … know?”

“About Amelia and her flirtation with Theo. Their elopement plans. She would never have gone. But she could no more help attaching him to her, encouraging him, than she could help … the violet color of her eyes. She was beautiful and bored, loving and … lovable. She intended no harm.”

“No. But it came to her.”

“It was coming, slowly, hurtfully…”

“That doesn’t make it right!”

“Still, I’m grateful.”

“Grateful? To a murderer? Grateful enough to let them get away with their crime? What if they decided death comes easy? What is to keep them from doing it again?”

“Don’t work yourself into hysteria. You don’t know Amelia was killed by choice. It could have been an accident. And if it comes to that, for all your conviction, you still haven’t proved I didn’t do it.”

“Does it come to this, you would rather not know? Why? Because it might be someone you cannot bear to part with?”

“No…”

“No? Marta admits she doesn’t know what took place. She never saw you. She saw nothing, she only heard a cry in the night. She cannot even swear it was Amelia!”

Slowly he moved toward her and lifting his hand, touched her cheek. “What is it you want? Revenge?”

She shook her head. “Only … only to know. I cannot bear to think…”

“Don’t. Don’t think. Let it go. Leave it alone before…”

But she would not let him finish. “You know, don’t you?”

He dropped his hand and turned to walk away.

“Jason!”

When he looked back at the door she asked, “Justice? Doesn’t it matter?”

“It’s a cold thing,” he answered, his hard gaze meeting her soft gray eyes squarely, “and lonely.”

Why was Jason so reluctant to bring home this deed without a name? The question nagged at Amanda as she stood staring out the window of her bedchamber hours later. The wind had fallen since noontime. The sky had grown more leaden. If the weather turned cold and rainy, perhaps they would call off the trip to the cemetery this evening. She did not want to go. Under the circumstances the idea filled her with repugnance. To stand at Amelia’s graveside with the person who had murdered her? No. She was not looking forward to the All Hallows’ Eve visit or the celebration of the Night of the Candles.

Whom was Jason protecting? The most obvious answer was himself. By his own admission he had been aware of Amelia’s affair with Theo. That he could speak of it so calmly now did not mean that he had never felt jealousy or hate because of the betrayal. She would have thought that his rage would have turned against Theo in a situation of that sort, but Jason was a strange, silent, self-contained man. It was not impossible that he might consider the abrupt death of Amelia as a more subtle and fitting revenge against the man who had dared to love her. Or it might have been even simpler than that. Amelia stood in the way of his possession of a second wife, a healthy and more voluptuous mistress for his home.

Then there was Sophia. She could have come in the night to offer Amelia the overdose with quiet words and a soothing hand on the sick woman’s brow. Who had a better reason than she? She wanted Amelia’s place, Amelia’s husband.

But she had only to wait, and they would have been hers in the fullness of time. Yes, but suppose Sophia had believed the lie of Amelia’s child. She might not have been able to bear the prospect of Amelia’s lingering into the early spring and bringing forth an heir who would displace the children God might grant to her and Jason.

Property, the land, Monteigne, meant much to Sophia who had lost her own heritage.

There was Carl, poor, mad, loyal Carl. Suppose Amelia, waking, had found him in her room and cried out in pain. Could he have had the sense, the intelligence to pour out a draught of her medicine and press it into her trembling hand, a draught too much? He was far from being as stupid as he appeared, Amanda knew.