Riverrun (24 page)

His hands took her shoulders and half-turned her toward him. She looked up at his face, saw the kindness, the love, the almost boyish lack of lines about his eyes and mouth. And the longer she stared, the closer he moved toward her until, quite without her realizing it, their lips touched; lightly at first, like the new kiss of a child, then hungrily on his part as his hands spanned her back and pulled her to him. She did not withdraw, feeling the pleasant weakness that attacked her spine as his fingers kneaded the flesh under the silk of her dress. She felt his tongue press against her teeth and, before she knew it, she had relaxed her lips and admitted its probing. A part of her cautioned that she was leading him on unfairly, and would bring to him a suffering as real as any suffered in battle.

But here, now, he was a yearning, a remembering, a balm for the months that had passed without anyone touching her, caressing, kissing her … and before she could stop herself she slid one hand to the back of his neck and crushed him to her. He was startled; she sensed it when he stiffened momentarily before banishing his amazement and abandoning his lover’s pretense.

And when they broke, she rested her cheek on his chest. “I—”

“I know,” he said softly into her hair, “you’ve said it before. But it will come, I’m sure of it, Cassandra. It will come. You’ve had more troubles than any one person, man or woman, has a right to. But I do see your eyes at the parties, Cass, when you look at the lights and listen to the music, when you’re dancing with every panting buck in the city. You love it and don’t want it at the same time. Don’t you think it’s about time you started thinking of yourself for a change?”

“But Kevin,” she said wearily, “there’s too much to do. When the war’s over, I have—”

“The past is dead, damn it! Nothing you do can bring about a resurrection. Not even our own remarkable Mr. Franklin invented a device to take us back in time; and you shouldn’t try, either. Otherwise …” He stopped, lifted her face to his and kissed her again.

But I don’t love you, she protested silently; I don’t love you at all!

Had he taken his lips from hers at that moment, she would have spoken the words aloud. But he didn’t. Instead, after a tentative brushing from which he received no rebuff, he placed a warm palm against her breasts and stroked them gently, pulling down at the neckline to free them to the additional cool touch of the breeze drifting in from the water. She gasped, froze, but he was growing more insistent and the strength of his arms fed her. When he whispered then that perhaps they might be more comfortable back at the house, she yanked at his hair, pushing his face to her throat, the tips of her breasts while her hands darted over his chest, plunged into his shirt and raked lightly, over his ribs. She knew her fervor surprised him, but she didn’t care; there was only a great white heat within and without that needed quenching, now.… When it was done and they were lying on the grass beneath the hickory, he shook his head in silent laughter.

“Cassandra, just when I think I know you, you amaze me again.”

She traced a finger across his thin muscled chest, kissed his shoulder, but said nothing.

“You know, we’re rather exposed here, don’t you think? I mean, a rider … a boat … you know, people.”

She took his left hand and placed it on her stomach, pushed at it until he was automatically rubbing the firm flesh in tight circles. When she was sure he would not be able to stop himself, she arched her back, lowered herself again and shifted suddenly so that his hand was trapped between her thighs. “Amazing,” he whispered as he rolled onto his side and caressed with his tongue her breasts, the valley between, moving lower until her eyes widened and were filled with the blue of the sky—a blue that soon turned to a sullen red that engulfed her with fire. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him up, kissed him fiercely, and locked her legs around his hips.

“Slow,” she ordered, and he obeyed, his teeth nipping wherever his mouth could reach while she rocked him into a rhythm that soon became a pummeling, a slapping of flesh against flesh, until she cried out with him and the sky returned to its own color.

H
e left her on the steps with a courtly bow, his smile still foolishly wide and his hands still trembling with eagerness. Twice, three times since they had reentered the city he had made her repeat her acquiescence to his proposal; and each time she did he whooped and shouted—like a child, she thought as she glanced at his profile. Handsome enough, virile enough, but still a child. As she watched him ride away in the carriage with his own horse tethered behind, she wondered if she had done the proper thing. Becoming Mrs. Kevin Roe had definitely not been in any of the versions of her plans; nevertheless, she thought in cold calculation, it could be useful if she were cautious, and did not let slip what had flashed through her mind during the ride home.

Mrs. Hamilton greeted her at the door sourly, something about a fishmonger giving her no end of trouble; but when the news was given her, the folds of her face multiplied in a grin, and Cass finally permitted herself to feel joy when the fat woman’s eyes brimmed over with tears. They hugged each other, laughed, stumbled back into the kitchen where the housekeeper immediately began thundering through the larder.

“My God, Miss Bowsmith, do you realize the people we’ll be feedin’? Where are we goin’ to … damn, I’ll have to get me a girl, that’s for damned sure. This place isn’t big enough, not by half. We’ll have to get some-” And so on for the next two hours while Cass sat at the table and weathered the woman’s storms of laughter and complaints. And indeed, the sensation was infectious. She could learn to love him, she thought; it was not beyond the realm of possibility. But at that moment, despite her excitement, she doubted it. Not until she could see for herself a marker, any kind of marker, that pointed to the grave where Eric Martingale lay.

Chapter Fifteen

T
he ballroom was crowded. Satins, diamonds, swirling hooped skirts, silks, fur trim, tiaras studded with emeralds and gold. Gentlemen in grays and blacks, in stiffly elegant military uniforms, sashes and medals, braid and velvet. Above them, on a balcony marked by sweeping, flowered arches, an orchestra played unceasingly, softly, loudly, sometimes lost in the explosions of laughter from the floor. The five massive chandeliers trembled when the dancing grew too heated. Small oval tables set around the outside of the room were either occupied or not, depending upon the guests’ stamina; and the French doors that made up the side wall were open to the veranda beyond. There were no lanterns outside, no oppressive heat—only the cool October evening and a bright full moon that touched everything with silver. Black servants glided unobtrusively throughout the first floor of the mansion, bearing pewter trays of drinks and food; a wandering trio of violinists passed through the other ground-floor rooms where couples and small groups sat and spoke quietly, not wanting to plunge into the steambath of the ball.

Margaret Davidson, plump and past forty, sat on a white stone bench at the curve where the veranda made its turn to run along the back of her home. Beside her was a dowager in black and gems. Both of them fluttered silk fans nervously under their chins despite the temperature, and perspiration spoiled the layers of poorly applied makeup that strove ineffectually to camouflage their years. Several other women of similar age in similar dress clustered around them, chattering incessantly, pausing only to stare boldly at a particularly well-dressed man as he passed by them, and sigh in remembrance.

The orchestra reached a crescendo and stopped. Boisterous applause and cries of “encore!” greeted the pause. A moment later the music began again.

Mrs. Davidson nodded. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, no small miracle these days, and she was about to say as much to Mrs. Nelson when the group around her fell silent again; this time, however, the silence was markedly different. She folded her fan into her right hand and looked up, and fought not to frown when she saw the woman they were staring at.

Cassandra, in green velvet to match her eyes and a triple strand of pearls, ignored the barely concealed glares as she passed. Her hands held her skirts lightly as she swept regally around the corner, her face tightening in an angry flush when she heard the conversations erupting behind her once she’d gone. Damned harpies, she thought, her lips hard against her teeth; why the hell I ever—she shook her head, and smiled when a young naval officer nodded to her over the shoulder of his wife. At least the men have no compunctions, she thought with a weary sigh; they don’t pay attention to anything but the way I look and the way I walk. It was at once galling and reassuring. But the thought, at the moment, did little to soothe her nerves.

She walked purposefully around the house along the veranda, as she had done three times already. And each time she passed a room with an open door she looked in, smiled politely at the occupants who glanced up, puzzled, and moved on. She did not allow herself to engage in conversation. To do so would mean she might miss finding Kevin, and he had to be around the house somewhere. She had last seen him nearly two hours before, when he had begged off one more dance and had vanished from the ballroom on the arm of a man whose face she had recognized but whose name she had not been given the privilege—if privilege it was—to know. The worst part of it, despite his jocular manner and offhanded references to “secret games among the rich, Cass”, was that she knew what he was doing; and should she finally discover him and try to dissuade him, there would only be another row. But what difference does it make? she thought; it would only be one more in an increasingly long string of arguments all based on one thing: Kevin had, coincident with the death of Lincoln six months earlier, begun to visit some of his old haunts again, those he had claimed she had exorcised from his soul when they were married. At first she had tolerated it because she knew he needed the diversion. Cavendish was not well, and more and more of the firm’s business had fallen on her husband’s shoulders. Too much of it, she thought when she had seen what it was doing to him, far too much; and the new man, Titus McWilliams, was still too unused to the ways of the game to be of much more assistance than poor David Vessler, whose dreams of becoming a partner in the firm had popped like a bubble when Cavendish brought McWilliams in from Boston. She had tolerated it, but no longer. Within a few short weeks, Kevin had begun to make excuses for leaving Jordan Lane at night. “Visiting friends.” “Late at the office.” Finally, he simply told her he was going out without telling her the destination. He knew he wasn’t fooling her, but whenever she tried to reason, plead, cajole, or bully him into understanding what he was doing to himself, he would fly into a rage that was so totally out of character that it frightened her.

“Ah, Mrs. Roe.”

She stopped, turned, nodded to the elderly couple who had just come out of the ballroom. “Mr. Osgood, Mrs. Osgood, how good to see you again.”

Charles Osgood took her hand and bowed over it, his yellowed white hair plastered hard against his skull. “Delighted to see you, aren’t we, my dear?”

Mrs. Osgood smiled, but Cass saw the strain and mirrored it, suddenly glanced beyond them and excused herself in haste. “An old friend,” she explained as she moved away, to the old man’s obvious consternation. “Please forgive me. I’ll talk with you later, if you don’t mind.” And she was gone before she could hear whatever answer they made. The bitch, she thought angrily; all of them are.

She frowned, finding another empty room, stepped inside and moved across the polished oaken floor to the hallway beyond. The orchestra’s fervor pummeled her ears as she walked slowly toward the front of the building, and a sudden cascade of shrill laughter almost made her retrace her steps for the relative peace of the outside. But she made her way to the spiral staircase that rose from the center hail, smiling, nodding, then lifting her skirts and hurrying up to the landing above. Her anger was growing, and she did not care who noticed it. If Kevin thought he could drag her nearly a full days ride into the country and then abandon her to a pack of female wolves who didn’t care whether she lived or died, he was very much mistaken. Cards or no cards, he was going to be properly attentive if she had to tie him to her arm.

The worst part of it was, he still loved her, and was too weak to do anything about his problem.

His love; that much she was sure of, at least; he had not lost any of the ardor with which he had courted her, nor any of the sagacity that had inexorably parlayed her meager allowance into a sizable amount of capital. Cavendish still disapproved of the speculation—now centering more and more on the expanding railways and the land booms beyond the Ohio valley—but he did not stand in his younger partner’s way. More than one client and more than one banker had been smitten by Kevin’s magical touch, and poor old Hiram hadn’t the nerve to make a strong stand for conservatism and propriety. Yet that was nearly the only area in which her husband’s judgment was still relatively sound; and she had not understood then, nor could she fully understand now, what kind of hideous demon it was that had lodged itself in him.

What she did understand was what it was doing to her.

When the war had ended, and when summer had reached its midpoint, she began making the final plans for her long-awaited journey into the South. She had worked out all the details, had even prepared descriptions and speculations for the men she would hire to find the men she wanted, and had been ready to present it all to Kevin so that he could arrange the financing, when, during one drunken bout of self-pity, he told her that his own personal fortune was virtually gone.

“Impossible!” she shouted.

“What do you know?” he’d said sullenly. “You’ve got more than anyone in the goddamned city.”

Her eyes had narrowed then. “An exaggeration, my love, but be sure of one thing; my money is already marked. You’ll have to feed your cards some other way.” The shock of his disclosure, however, had kept her from doing anything more. Until tonight. Until her anger at his insensitivity and weakness became too much to bear