Pegasus: A Novel (39 page)

“Then we’ll visit her, and she’ll visit us. You said it yourself, we can’t keep her
locked up here forever. She’s a young woman.”

“I was thinking London, not Virginia,” she said wistfully. And she would miss Violet
so much if they left, but she knew Charles was right, and she wanted whatever was
best for Marianne. And Arthur Garrison looked like he might be it. Only Marianne still
wasn’t convinced. She was keeping him at arm’s length.

By early April, Arthur was discouraged. He had the feeling that Marianne would never
let herself love again, or not for a long time. And he had fallen in love with her.
He stopped calling her for a few days to give himself some air, and Marianne was surprised.
She had gotten used to spending a lot of time with him for the past few
months, and hearing from him constantly, whenever he wasn’t working. She mentioned
it to Julie, who suggested that she might have finally scared him off, and Marianne
spent the next few days thinking about it, afraid she had. And she suddenly realized
that she didn’t want that to happen. She liked him more than she wanted to admit.

She sounded relieved when he finally called her again. “I missed you,” she confessed,
and he beamed when she said it.

“Well, that’s good news. I figured that you’d be relieved not to hear from me.” He
had almost given up on her.

“I’m not relieved, Arthur,” she said honestly. “I’m just scared.”

“I know you are. Me too. But good things can be scary sometimes. You just have to
be brave enough to grab them.”

“I don’t know if I’m that brave,” or if she wanted to be, but she knew now that she
didn’t want to lose him either.

She was warmer when she saw him for dinner that night, and animated when they talked,
and when he took her home this time, he kissed her. She hesitated at first, and then
let herself go and kissed him with a passion she had forgotten. He didn’t press her
for anything then. He kissed her lightly again and told her he’d call her in the morning,
and she looked dreamy eyed when she walked into the house and Julie saw her.

“What happened to you?” Julie asked her, and Marianne smiled mysteriously and didn’t
answer. “Don’t tell me Sleeping Beauty is waking up again. Good lord! Hallelujah!”
Julie had been worried about her too. She’d been so frozen when she first came to
London, as though everything inside her was dead.

“Maybe” was all Marianne would say, and went upstairs to bed. But when she saw Arthur
again the following night, things were progressing nicely.

Two weeks later, after they’d been dancing all evening at a private club, they talked
about Berlin falling soon, and she suddenly realized that when the war ended, he would
be going home to Virginia. And thinking about it, she suddenly felt panicked. She
said something about it to him, and he was happy to hear it.

“May I consider that a hopeful sign?” he asked her, and she smiled, and he kissed
her. They had been doing a lot of kissing in the past few weeks, and she wasn’t as
disconnected as she feared. He could sense that she was a passionate woman. She had
just been badly wounded. But he was a patient man, and he was willing to spend a lifetime
helping her recover. He was trying to let her know that, and he thought she was hearing
him at last.

For the next few weeks, as the war ended in Germany, Arthur did everything he could
to reassure her. They were together when the German surrender to the Allies was announced,
and it was a day of jubilation in England and all over Europe. It was bittersweet
for Marianne, without Edmund and her father. Arthur said he’d probably be going home
in June, back to his horse farm in Virginia.

“I’ll have to go to my home in Germany to decide what to do with it,” she said with
a look of profound sadness. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to sell it. I could never live
there without my father, and now knowing he died there. I think he must have come
to hate Germany in the end. I don’t want to live there anymore. Charles Beaulieu said
he’d help me put it on the market.”

“And the horses?” he asked sympathetically.

“They’re all gone. The Germans took them. The stables are empty. And the house. At
least the German high command never took it.” And then she smiled at him. “It was
probably too drafty and too hard to heat.” He laughed at that. Most European castles
seemed to be, from what he’d seen. She wondered if Nick would sell their old
schloss now, too, or if he’d come home. After seven years in America and a life there,
she didn’t think so. Germany was over for all of them.

They talked late into the night. And two weeks later, Arthur told her that he was
going home at the end of June. She nodded sadly when he said it.

“I’d like to ask you something, Marianne,” he said quietly. “I’ll understand whatever
you decide. But would you do me the honor of marrying me? I know this isn’t easy for
you, and it would be a whole new life in America. But I love you, and little Violet.
I would love you to be my wife.” She hesitated for an eternity as she looked at him,
and he was sure she would say no. And then she nodded. He nearly fell out of his seat,
and he wanted to whoop with glee. But he didn’t want to scare her. Instead he kissed
her and promised to take care of her for the rest of her life, and she believed him.
And she didn’t ask him never to die. She knew better now. Sometimes people died, even
if they didn’t mean to. They couldn’t help it. And it didn’t mean they didn’t love
you.

“I love you too,” she said softly. “I’ll try to be a good wife.”

“You don’t have to try to be anything,” he said, kissing her again.

“I have to settle my father’s estate in Germany, and put the house on the market.
Maybe I could come in September.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said peacefully. “I’ll be waiting for you.” And she knew
he would be, for however long it took.

Arthur left for America at the end of June to be released from the army, and return
to Virginia. And in July, Marianne went to Germany. It was the first time she’d been
back in five years, and the country was a shambles. It broke her heart to see it.
And it nearly killed her to see their schloss again, empty and sad and deserted. She
took her father’s old lawyer with her, and asked two of the tenant farmers and their
wives to help her. She spent a week packing up the house. She had to dispose of her
father’s possessions, and many of her own. She had a big job deciding what to give
away, and what to keep, or sell. She wanted to send a few family heirlooms to America,
like their silver and her grandmother’s china, and some furniture she loved, and a
portrait of her father. And she spent a whole afternoon going through the treasures
of her childhood. There were so many memories, and all of it made her sad now. In
the end, she kept very little, and decided to sell a lot of the furniture and even
the ancestral portraits with the schloss. She had never really liked them and had
no use for them now.

And there was nothing for her to keep from the stables. All the
Lipizzaners and Arabians were gone. She and the lawyer decided what price she wanted
for the estate. Her father’s cars had disappeared from the garage, even the Hispano-Suiza
he had loved, stolen by the Third Reich as well. The objects mattered nothing to her.
She missed her father. She had come to say goodbye.

She stopped at her father’s unmarked grave, near the chapel on her estate. No one
had ordered a headstone for him, since he had been killed by the Third Reich, and
she asked the lawyer to do it. She visited the tenant farmers before she left, and
thanked them for their many years of service to her father. She was a lady to her
core, with all the sense of honor and responsibility that her father had taught her
by his example.

And then she and the lawyer drove past the von Bingen schloss. It looked empty and
deserted too. And she shuddered when she thought of who had lived there and that no
one of the family would return. It was overwhelmingly sad.

Marianne felt as though she had crawled through hundreds of years of history when
she left Germany and went back to Haversham. She hoped to never return. Her life there
was over. It was finished. And it was a relief to go back to the Beaulieus. They truly
were her only family now, other than Violet. She was going to America in September
to marry Arthur, and Isabel and Charles were happy for her. She had promised to spend
the summer with them, and to return as often as she could. And they were going to
visit her in Virginia too.

She and Isabel walked in the gardens the day she returned from Altenberg, the way
she used to with Edmund. She had come so far in the last five years, and the Beaulieus
had been so good to her. She had grown up. Violet had thrived, and they had lost a
son. The world had changed. And now she was going to America for a new life. She
looked at Isabel and smiled as they walked back into the house, remembering how terrified
she had been the day she arrived, and now this was home to her in many ways, and they
were like her parents, not just Edmund’s. And she could almost feel him with her as
she walked into the morning room. Violet was there, playing with her grandfather,
and looking so like her father.

It would be a new chapter for Marianne now, a new country, a new life, and finally
she was ready. And she knew Edmund would have approved.

Nick had the same difficult decision to make as Marianne, once the war in Germany
ended. He had a schloss, extensive lands, and tenant farms. The house and lands still
belonged to him, now that the Third Reich had fallen and he could own his estate again.
But unlike Marianne, he had no desire to go back, even for a visit. He was sure. His
homeland had betrayed him. And he knew it would break his heart to see it all again,
and the manor house where his father died of grief, upholding his duty to God and
country till the end. And seeing Alex’s deserted schloss now that he was dead would
be no better.

Nick decided to sell all of it, and make his life in the States for good, in the country
that had welcomed him. He told Christianna about his decision, and she wasn’t surprised.
She had always believed that he wouldn’t go back to Germany, just as he said. Too
much had happened there to hurt him.

Nick had contacted a Red Cross group and a Jewish refugee organization, trying to
trace his mother, when the war ended, and in September, they told him what he had
suspected. She had died with her husband, four children, and several other relatives,
including
her parents. The whole family had been wiped out, like so many others. It didn’t surprise
him, but it made him sad. She had had other children, but had never known him. He
felt as though he had lost her again when they told him.

He was startled when his father’s old lawyer contacted him, after their exchange of
letters in the summer, asking for Nick’s permission to sell the estate. He had been
offered a handsome price by an Austrian count, to buy everything, and after a night’s
reflection, Nick took it. It wasn’t a fortune like the one they’d had before the war,
but it was a great deal of money, enough to do whatever he wanted. And he knew what
that was. He wanted to buy the ranch in Santa Ynez that he’d been dreaming of for
years. Either an existing one, once he started looking, or he would build one. But
it was time. He had been with the circus for seven years. He had just turned fifty,
and he wanted a home for them and their children.

He told Christianna that when they got back to Florida, he wanted to leave the circus,
and buy a ranch in California. She was horrified when he told her. She had always
hoped this day would never come. But he had the money to do it now, and provide a
wonderful life for all of them. The days of poverty and hardship were over—and for
him, his years with the circus.

“I can’t go,” Christianna said in a choked voice.

“Are you serious?” He looked shocked. “We can do whatever we want now. We don’t have
to live like gypsies in a trailer anymore.”

“But this is all I know, Nick,” she said, sounding panicked. She was twenty-eight
years old, and this was the only life she’d ever known. And Chloe was two, and he
wanted her to have more than the circus, before it became her only life, too, which
it already was. He knew that Sandor and her brothers wouldn’t like it, but he thought
this
was an important move for them. And he owed it to Lucas too. He was thirteen, and
needed good schools now, and a future, not just clowns as his best friends, and the
bearded lady.

Christianna was so upset that she wouldn’t even talk to him about it. And she hadn’t
told her father, but whenever Nick tried to bring up the subject, she said she wouldn’t
leave the circus. He wanted to give notice immediately, but he agreed to wait until
January or February, or even March or April when they left on tour. But he assured
her again that they were leaving. And she refused to discuss it with him again. But
Nick was determined, he had made the decision, and he had the money to buy or build
a beautiful horse ranch and stock it with fine horses for breeding, even Lipizzaners
if he wanted. He had freedom again now, but had learned so much in the meantime.

Nick got a sweet letter from Marianne at Christmas, and was surprised to learn that
she had moved to Virginia, gotten married to a man who bred horses, and was already
expecting a baby with him. She said her schloss hadn’t sold yet, but she was sure
it would soon. And most important, she was happy and at peace. And she sounded very
much in love with her husband. She wanted Nick and his family to come and visit. She
was longing to see him, and suggested they come in January. Nick talked to Christianna
and told her how important Marianne was to him, almost like a daughter, and she agreed
to make the trip with him. She was only four years older than Marianne, and Violet
was a year older than Chloe. And it would be the first time Nick had seen her in seven
years. Lucas’s memories of her were already hazy, but Nick’s were crystal clear.