Swan's Grace (13 page)

But then she stopped abruptly when she noticed Gray-son, though even he couldn't dampen her spirits. "What are you doing here?"

"I have business to discuss with your father. Perhaps you could excuse us for a moment."

She tilted her head, suddenly aware of an odd tension that shimmered through the room. "But I had a note asking me to come to the study."

"Yes, but it was a mistake."

With eyes that had intimidated some of the most powerful men in Boston, Grayson shot Patrice a quelling look.

Sophie didn't understand what was going on, but frankly she was still too content to care. She was exhausted, and the excitement of the night was starting to wear off. She longed to slip between cool, downy sheets and drift into a dreamless sleep.

"Fine," she said with an indifferent shrug. "I'll ask Jeters to drive me back to Swan's Grace." She twirled around suddenly and laughed. "I want to get to bed so I will be refreshed by midday." She headed for the door and pulled it wide as if she were dancing with it, her low-heeled dancing slippers clicking on the hardwood floor just beyond the Oriental carpet. "Donald Ellis is taking me out to Brookline for a picnic tomorrow afternoon. And after that, Allan Beekman has asked me to dinner at Locke-Ober's."

"You will do no such thing!" Patrice snapped.

The words sizzled through the room, stopping Sophie abruptly, the doorknob still held in her hand.

"Patrice," Grayson warned ominously.

"What is going on here?" Sophie asked. "The three of you have been acting strange since I walked through the door."

"You will not go anywhere with any man, do you understand me?" her stepmother asked.

"Why not? What harm is there in a picnic with a man I have known since he was in short pants, or dinner with an old family friend?"

"It is time someone told you that engaged women do not go on picnics with men who aren't their intended. And you are engaged," Patrice added.

Sophie froze. Conrad groaned.

Tension, like fire, shimmered through the room. Sophie felt it, white and hot against her skin.

Emotion flared, but she forced it aside and laughed. "That is ridiculous. I haven't been home long enough to meet anyone new, much less become engaged. Who in the world has been spreading such rumors?" She looked at Grayson, her eyes chastising. "Have you been trying to get me into trouble again?"

He didn't reply. He stood like a tight coil ready to unleash, his handsome features dark and murderous.

At length he ran a large hand through his midnight black hair. "I think you know I don't spread rumors, Sophie."

"Then who said such a thing? And who could I possibly be engaged to?"

"To Grayson," Patrice stated triumphantly, though she wasn't looking at Sophie. Her eyes were locked on the man in question.

Sophie went still, and she felt every fiber of her being pulling in on her as she stared at her stepmother in shock.

She forced another laugh, this one hollow and aching even in her own ears, as she looked at Grayson. "Enough with the jests."

"This is no jest, Sophie," he said after a moment, deep, troubled regret etched on his face. "We are betrothed."

All traces of laughter vanished. "You've got to be out of your mind. We've hardly exchanged a civil word since I got here, and certainly not a word about marriage."

She jerked around to face her father.

"It's true," Conrad said without having to be asked. "I made the arrangements before you returned to Boston."

The words were like a blow. Her eyes bored into her father. "That's why you asked me to come back, isn't it? So you could marry me off, not so I could be with—"

She bit the words back, swallowing them with effort.

There had been times in her life when she understood that the next sentence uttered would change her life forever. She realized this was one of those moments, realized somewhere in her mind that she already knew the answer to her unfinished question.

Her father still didn't have a place for her in his world.

She felt her heart tear, ripped apart by indifferent hands as if it were no more consequential than a child's craft made of thick colored paper.

Beyond that, her father had taken it upon himself to change her life. Irrevocably and without her consent. Yet again he had betrayed her.

Her knees felt like putty when she realized that her life had changed some time ago and she simply hadn't known it. She had danced through the days seeing what she thought was the truth, when all the while it was a lie. She hadn't been free. She hadn't been loved.

How long had it been since her father had changed her world without telling her? A month? A year?

Deep down, had she actually sensed that her life had shifted the minute she got the letter from her father? Was it possible that she'd had some clue early on? Had she understood that some other reason besides love prompted him to ask her to return?

She shook the thoughts away. She didn't want to hear what Grayson was saying, wouldn't accept it. If she acted as if the words hadn't been spoken, she could make them go away.

"I'm really tired," she said, feeling disjointed and dizzy.

"And Donald is picking me up at noon. I've got to get some rest."

Patrice gasped. "Haven't you heard a word that has been said here tonight? You aren't going on any picnic."

"I hope it snows. There is nothing more divine than a beautiful winter carriage ride to the country when the landscape is crisp with new-fallen snow."

She started back for the door, her mind an odd blank.

"Stop this," Patrice demanded.

"Perhaps I'll take my cello along, with a basket of fruit and cheese."

"What has gotten into you?" her father blurted out.

"Maybe even some warmed wine would be nice. People drink wine like water in France. Did you know that?"

"Sophie."

Grayson's voice filled the room, filling the void in her mind like no one else could. Reminding her. Making it impossible to keep the words at bay, as she wanted so badly to do.

With the haze and fog cruelly swept away, she whirled to face him. "What?" she demanded. "What do you want from me?"

He started to reach out to her, to wrap his fingers around her arms and pull her close, as he had done so many times since she had arrived. That possessive gesture. Now she knew why. He felt that he owned her.

She yanked her arm away and watched as his expression grew grim.

"We are engaged, Sophie, and I cannot allow you to go on a picnic with Donald Ellis, or dinner with anyone else."

She felt steel fill her soul, and she welcomed the hardness.

"Then
un
engage us. Good God, I've never known two more ill-matched people in all my life."

"I disagree," he replied.

She whirled back to Conrad, her heart pounding so hard she was sure everyone could hear. "Then you undo this, Father."

Conrad's lips pursed, then he said, "I can't. God, what a mess this has become."

"Why?" Her voice started to rise. "Tell me why you can't undo an unforgivable wrong?"

Conrad looked as if he wanted to shrink away. But Patrice was not so bothered.

"Your father can't undo the betrothal because money has changed hands."

Sophie's shoulders stiffened, a pain sweeping through her that was hard to imagine, but her eyes never wavered from her father. "If you've given him some sort of dowry, ask for it back."

Conrad's face blushed red. "Actually, it was Grayson who settled an amount on us. And I've already spent the money, Sophie, love."

The endearment seemed to spur Patrice on. "While you've been enjoying yourself in Europe, we've had bills to pay."

"Bills to pay?" Confusion filled her. "Father has more money than Croesus. Everyone knows that. Or if you don't have enough money to pay your bills, why build this house? Good God, the halls are all but jewel encrusted, and there are enough servants to run a large hotel."

Then she stopped, her heart wrenching in her chest. "You have bills
because
of this house," she whispered, as brutal understanding came clear. "You sold me and my home without my knowledge or consent to pay for this… this monstrosity."

"I hardly call this a monstrosity," Patrice bit out.

"Then what would you call it? What would you call a garish mausoleum that you bought and paid for with my money, my house—my soul?"

"Good Lord, Sophie," Patrice scoffed. "Stop being so dramatic."

"Dramatic?" Sophie asked, pulling the word out with scathing sarcasm. "Oh, that's right. Sophie is always dramatic. Anyone else would be considered upset or furious— indignant over a wrong that has been done. But I'm always dramatic. Well, let me tell you how dramatic I am." She turned to Grayson. "I'm not about to be sold off to the highest bidder. And if I have to, I'll pay the money back myself." She would, even if it took her the rest of her life to pay off the debt. "What is the amount? I'll even pay interest. You can make a decent return on your investment," she finished coldly.

"I don't want your money. I want you as my wife."

"But I don't want you!" Not as a husband, not as someone who would demand he control her life. She couldn't take that; she couldn't be molded into something she had never learned how to be, unable to guide her own destiny, dependent on others to make her dreams come true. Didn't Grayson understand that, Grayson who had known her for so long and so well? Didn't her lifelong friend understand that she couldn't be caged? No matter how much he drew her.

And the truth was, he didn't really know her anymore. He only thought he did. He had no idea who she had become.

Grayson didn't respond; he only looked at her with grim determination.

"I'll fight it," she stated. She stopped pacing and took in the three people in the room. "I am not a commodity to be traded."

"You can fight it, but you won't win," Grayson said with quiet solemnity. "I drew up the contract myself. Only I can let you out of it."

"Then do it!"

He looked at her for an eternity, emotions that she couldn't fathom drifting across the sculpted planes of his face—at war with himself, as if he wanted to let go of her but couldn't. "No, Sophie. I can't do that."

"You can't or you won't?"

"It hardly matters. The result is the same. But I will give you time to get used to the idea. Promise me you won't do anything rash in the meantime."

"The only promise I'll make is that I will never marry you. I don't care if you have a contract. I don't care if you have bought and paid for me."

With that she turned as calmly as she could, fighting back the tears that burned in her eyes, and started through the doorway. But at the last minute she stopped and turned back to Grayson.

"One last thing. Niles Prescott asked me to perform at the Music Hall."

"And you said no."

"I've changed my mind. Tell him yes."

Patrice clasped her hands together, her mood instantly changing. "This is wonderful news. It will be a grand event! Everyone who is anyone will want to attend."

Sophie looked at her stepmother, her bitterness no longer contained. "Everyone who is anyone? Do you really think there is more for you to conquer, Patrice? Do you have to have every man loving you? Wasn't my father enough of a prize? Wasn't it enough for you to come into Swan's Grace to nurse my mother, and instead take her place?"

"Sophie!" Conrad gasped.

Patrice's eyes narrowed.

"There was nothing untoward going on between Patrice and me while your mother was still alive."

No, nothing untoward in a physical sense. But only because Patrice was too smart for that.

"Apologize to your stepmother this instant," Conrad demanded.

"I don't think that is necessary. She'll get her concert, and the cream of society will attend. That should mollify her," she said, her eyes locked with Patrice's. "In fact," she added, her chin rising, her mind racing with what gown she would wear—the low-cut red velvet, or the ruby satin with more lace than bodice, "I suspect that indeed it will be a grand event, one Boston won't soon forget."

Then she looked at Grayson. "And since you are so good at drawing up contracts, draw one up for this. I want a specific date and terms of payment. I'd hate for Niles Prescott to have second thoughts at some point down the road, and try to back out. My time is valuable," she offered, and smiled her best diva smile. "I bet you didn't realize I go for a hundred dollars an hour."

Then she quit the room, leaving her father, stepmother, and Grayson in a crystalline moment of completely stunned silence.

The clay was soft in her hands, smooth and cool, yielding to her touch.

Emmaline sat on her high stool in a simple cotton gown, her gray hair in one long braid coiled at the back of her head. The smell of clay filled the room. Clay and glazes. Firing and heat.

Breathing in, she sat up straight and arched her back. It was early, the day after the Wentworths' party at The Fens, an event that had been oddly strained. She had sensed that the only person there who had enjoyed herself at all was Sophie.

Dear, sweet Sophie.

Emmaline knew that Bradford wanted Sophie and Gray-son to marry. He said a good marriage always distracted from scandals. And even she had to concede that Matthew and Lucas had certainly caused their share of those. Now her husband was depending on Grayson to make Boston forget what his brothers had done.

Yes, a marriage could do just that. But that wasn't what she cared about. She believed Sophie could make her son happy. Grayson had spent too many years being serious and responsible, with a breathtakingly tight rein on his control. Sophie had spent too many years being independent and wild wild. Together, Emmaline believed, they would find the perfect balance. No couple could be too much of only one trait.

But what if her son did to Sophie what Bradford had done to her, trying to force her into a mold that never fit?

She shook the thought away. Grayson was demanding, but more of himself than of those around him. He was good and kind, and he would make Sophie the perfect husband. Plus, Sophie was strong and confident. How else could she have become so successful on her own?

As a result, when Bradford had told her of the impending marriage, she hadn't mentioned the rumors she had heard years ago in the women's circles she moved in regarding her dear friend Genevieve and that awful Niles Prescott.

It had been so long ago that Emmaline couldn't imagine that anyone remembered the gossip and innuendo. But Bradford might not see it that way.

Emmaline stretched the muscles that weren't used to sitting on a backless chair so high off the ground for such extended hours. While working, she had forgotten about everything but the clay before her.

Not that her suspended state of mind had helped the work, she thought as she studied the misshapen lump before her. She had made more mistakes than progress, but still, it felt good to be laboring with her hands after all these years.

She grimaced when she thought of the story she had made up so she would be left in her room undisturbed— yet again. She had mumbled something about a sick headache. She wanted to make up an excuse so she could go out. But her husband always insisted she be seen about town with a companion. In truth, a chaperon.

The thought made her bristle. Surely her son wouldn't turn out as harsh and demanding as his father.

But the sick headache had worked well enough. Not that it would take much to keep people away, especially her husband. Bradford Hawthorne hadn't come to her room, much less her bed, since shortly after Lucas was born. And that was nearly thirty years ago.

For a long time she had given little thought to her husband's absence. She had been too busy with three young boys to raise, servants to oversee, menus to plan, and good works to contribute to society. And when she finally had begun to wonder, she hadn't had the energy at the end of the long days to worry about it. She had been sure that as soon as the boys grew more independent, and the Hawthornes' place in financial circles had been well and truly reestablished, she and Bradford would come back together with all the passion he had directed her way during their courting.

She had been wrong.

Embarrassment stained her cheeks as she remembered the times she had tried to attract him. The provocative nightwear. The intimate dinners. But at the end of each night, she was dutifully kissed on the forehead and sent off to bed like a child.

She bit her lip and looked out the grimy window as she remembered the night she had swallowed her pride and boldly gone to her husband's bed, her heart in her throat. The sudden sight of him standing at the window in his shirtsleeves, so handsome, so strong. But when he had turned to her she saw the hardness in his eyes that she somehow always managed to forget. And his words.

"What is it, Mrs. Hawthorne?"

Even in the intimacy of the bedroom he was formal.

Her courage had started to desert her, but she had come too far.

"I thought… well, perhaps… we might, or rather you might want…"

Her words trailed off as his gaze boldly ran the length of her. For a moment she was encouraged, but then his eyes met hers.

"I will pretend I don't understand your meaning, Mrs. Hawthorne. I would hate to learn that my wife thinks of the baser aspects of life as anything other than a duty to conceive children. You have given me three sons. Your duty is done."

He had turned back to the window then. Emmaline had stood frozen, mortified, desolate, and desperate to shout at this man who so callously turned his back on her. Her duty was done, but that didn't mean she didn't have desires. Or was she different? Was she truly wanton and improper? Did other wives truly want nothing to do with their husbands after they had children?

But she asked no questions. Made no demands. She only turned slowly, mechanically around and slipped back through the doorway to her room.

The following morning her belongings had been moved to the opposite end of Hawthorne House.

"Emmaline, love! I'm so glad you are here and working! Your sculpture is… interesting!"

Emmaline jerked in surprise on the stool and nearly fell off. But Andre Springfield caught her.

"Gathering wool, were you?" he asked, his smile as bright as the day.

"Guilty as charged," she said, thoughts of Bradford fading away. "And you are being much too kind in your assessment of my work. It is interesting only if you find a misshapen block of clay intriguing."

He threw back his lion's mane of hair and laughed, startling the other sculptors in the cavernous room.

"Come," he said, pulling her away, "have tea with me. Colette has it ready."

"Andre, I can't."

"Of course you can."

He didn't wait for her response. He dragged her out of the room and onto a glassed-in back terrace, the gardens dormant just beyond. It would be beautiful in spring.

He held a chair for her, then took one for himself. He poured for each of them into old, chipped cups of fine china. From a coat pocket he produced a bottle.

"May I sweeten your cup?" he asked, the bottle poised to pour.

Her surprise at the decadence brought a smile to her lips. She remembered long days in the summer when she was struggling to be an artist. Wine and cheese. Long conversations in cafes on street corners. But those days were gone. "No, Andre, but thank you."

He laughed. "All the more for me then," he said as he poured a generous portion of what looked like brandy into his cup.

He didn't bother to stir. He reached into another pocket and produced a pipe and a packet of tobacco. With the ease of someone used to smoking, he made quick order of the implements, then sat back with a sigh as he lit a match. But just as he brought the flame to the pipe's bowl, he hesitated, looking at her through the orange flare.

"You don't mind if I smoke, do you, Emmaline?"

"Of course not," she all but stammered.

"Good," he said, then sucked on the stem as he brought the flame to the tobacco.

"God, life is fine," he offered on an exhale of smoke. "I might not have much money, but I have a satisfying life." He busied himself straightening the china and matches, then looked at her. "Can you say the same thing, sweet Emmaline?"

Flustered, she sat back in the chair, grimacing when her spine hit a bent slat of the metal chair.

Andre nodded knowingly. "I see you can't."

"I hardly think that grimacing after nearly maiming myself on a piece of metal constitutes an answer. I was thinking."

"Thinking about how unfortunately correct I am."

"I have a lovely life. My boys are wonderful. My home is beautiful. My life is full."
But not satisfying
.

The unspoken words hung in the air.

"And what about your marriage? Is that full, too?"

Her inclination was to cry out the truth, to finally share the secret disappointment she carried with her. She and Andre had always been able to discuss all the things men and women didn't talk about. Love. Life. Hopes and dreams. She realized now how much she had missed his friendship.

But long years of training since her marriage never to show one's feelings, much less talk about them, kept the words securely back in her throat. She could hardly speak at all over the lump.

"My marriage is quite full, thank you," she said primly, the effect somehow lost as she sat with a man not her husband who sipped brandy in the middle of the day.

"Then why are you here?" He leaned forward, his tea sloshing carelessly as he planted his elbows on the rickety table. "I thought the minute you saw Richard Smythe, I'd never see you again."

She looked away.

"He still affects you. Is that why you are really here?"

Her head snapped back and she met his eyes. "I am here to sculpt. Nothing more. I have no interest in ever seeing Richard again."

"Perhaps you should tell him that."

"I'm married, Andre. I shouldn't have to tell him anything. But I will if I need to."

"I think you do. And now is your chance."

Her breath caught when Andre sat back and looked toward the doorway.

She whirled around and found Richard standing there, much as he had only a week before when he suddenly had appeared, leaning against the doorjamb. Amused. Arrogant. Breathtakingly handsome. Making her want to reach out to him.

"Em, I knew you'd be back."

Outrage mixed with her pounding heart, and she tried to push up from the table. But the chair was heavy, and her long skirt caught on the crooked arm.

"Let me help you," Richard said, suddenly at her side, his voice a breath against her ear.

She slapped at his hands and managed to break free.

"Don't tell me you are going to run away again." His smile was wide and fall, revealing straight, white teeth. "I tried to talk to you last time, but you slipped out the front door and into traffic before I could catch you."

"You have no business trying to catch me." The words were strained; even she could hear that.

"True, but I never had any business catching you. Not now. Not back then."

She felt his words like heat to her skin.

"And we both know that there was a day when I did."

"Stop!" She slapped her hands over her ears. "Stop this instant," she said more quietly. "My coming here is not about you!"

He reached out and gently took her hands away, but he didn't let them go. "If that's true, then what is it about? You had to have known I would be here."

She turned on him then, his arrogant assumptions unleashing her long-held anger. "I'd have to know? Why? How? All I know is that years ago you disappeared without a word of good-bye or explanation."

She pulled free with a yank and she could feel her hairpin give way. The long braid loosened, and tendrils escaped to curl about her face. She was fifty years old, standing in a pottery house with wild hair, feeling like a wayward schoolgirl. "Don't stand there and tell me what I know or don't know. I am here to sculpt. Nothing more."