The Adultress (46 page)

I could for myself. I would defy him. But what of Charles? Suppose they discovered that Jean-Louis had died from an excess of the drug? Charles had said he had died of heart failure. He would be ruined. Old scandals would be revived. It would be remembered that he had prescribed that which killed his wife and child.

As for myself … I would stand exposed, adulteress and perhaps murderess. I would face all that to save Lottie … but should I save her? I could not do this to Charles.

I had to see him.

I rode into town and was relieved to find him there.

He listened in shocked silence to what I had to tell him.

“That fiend knows everything,” he said.

“He admits to having his spies. Someone must have seen us together … and told him. Evalina! You remember that day in the woods. It might even have been Hetty. She was under his spell in a way, I believe. … One can never be sure with Dickon. He has a sort of evil power. Lottie’s life will be ruined if she marries him. All he wants is Eversleigh. She would never understand his ways. He would break her heart. Charles, what can we do?”

He said: “We can stand up and face everything.”

“They will say we killed Jean-Louis. We shall never be able to explain. Your career will be at an end. You will never be allowed to practice again.”

“It would be the end … for both of us, Zipporah,” he said. “Murder … yes, they would say it was murder.”

“I could have stopped him,” I said. “I will take the blame. It is mine. I should have stopped him.”

“You knew how he suffered.”

“But I let him do that. I knew what he was doing … and I let him.”

“Because you knew it was his wish.”

“Oh, Charles, what are we to do?”

“I don’t know. We have to think. We must not act rashly.”

“I have done something, Charles. I have written to Lottie’s father. I have asked him to invite her there to see him. When I hear from him I shall send her to him. That will take her away … for a while. New impressions … I was thinking …”

“It might help. Who can say? In the meantime …”

“Yes,” I said, “in the meantime …”

“We can only wait.”

He kissed me tenderly.

“Perhaps it will come right in the end. Do you think it will, Zipporah?”

“Yes,” I said, “if we let it … perhaps it will. We shall have to forget so much.”

I saw his tortured face, then he said: “I don’t think I ever could be at peace remembering. You see, Dorinda so much wanted to live. Jean-Louis wanted to die.”

Then he held me against him. We clung together. We were both afraid to look too far ahead.

I rode slowly back to the house. It was deserted. There seemed to be an unnatural quiet everywhere. I went to my room and as I glanced out of the window I saw that there was a strange glow in the sky.

I ran toward it.

Fire. In the distance, I saw the billowing smoke and the flames shooting up.

I wondered where it could be.

I went downstairs. I saw one of the older women servants in the hall.

I said: “There’s a fire somewhere.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the hospital. They’m all gone over to lend a hand.”

I ran out into the stables.

Within a short while I was riding hard for the hospital.

I
COULD NOT BELIEVE
that this dreadful thing had happened. It had come so suddenly, so unexpectedly, shattering our lives.

Charles had died a hero’s death. He had died rescuing women and children from his hospital. He had saved several lives and that would be the greatest compensation to him. I could only hope that he was happy now.

The Forsters took me back to Enderby. We mourned together. Everything forgotten but our loss. I think they had known how it was with Charles and me and they were pleased because I had brought some happiness into his life.

The mothers and children who had been rescued that night were taken to another hospital some miles away, for Charles’s building was a complete wreck.

Life was ironical, for the hero of the hour was Dickon. He had mustered a fire-fighting force and had several times plunged into the inferno and rescued women and children. His heroic deeds were talked of everywhere.

I was unable to think of anything during the days that followed except that I had lost Charles. There would never be that life together which we had planned. Perhaps it would never have been idyllic because there would have been too many memories to overcome.

I went back to Eversleigh and thought:
What shall I do now?

I had lost my lover but my problem remained. I must stand and face it alone.

I need not worry about Charles now. Nothing could harm him. But Dickon was still in a position to blackmail me, to have me accused of murder.

I felt numb … sometimes not caring what he did. … Only wishing to save Lottie.

But how could I save Lottie? If I stood convicted as a murderess would that make her turn even more to Dickon?

There was another tragedy. We discovered on the morning after the fire that Miss Carter was missing. Several people had seen her in the hospital and no one had seen her afterward; it could only be assumed that she must have been one of the victims. Lottie was very upset. She had been fond of Miss Carter for all that she had poked gentle fun at her.

Life had to go on. I was alone now.

I thought:
And Dickon is here … in this house.
And what will happen when he comes face to face with James Fenton, as he decidedly must?

Will James want to leave?

Trivial problems, perhaps, compared with the great one which stared me in the face.

Lottie’s future … with Dickon. I could not bear to think of that.

He sought me out, as he said, for a little chat. … He was as suave and nonchalant as ever.

“A great tragedy this fire. All the doctor’s good work gone up in smoke.”

“His career, which you were planning to ruin … over.”

“I was only planning to ruin it if you would not be sensible. I did give you the chance, didn’t I?”

“Oh, Dickon … life is so tragic … can’t you just try to let us be at peace for a while.”

“My dearest cousin, it is what I wish more than anything. We will all be happy here at Eversleigh.”

“Do you want it as much as all that, Dickon?”

“I want it completely and absolutely. I always made up my mind it would be mine. And it should be, Zipporah. I’m one of the family. I am the
man
of the family. It was crazy of Uncle Carl to leave it to you when I was there. I know my father was a damned Jacobite … but so was your grandfather … the most damned and mighty of them all. It’s madness. It belongs to me and I intend to have it.”

“Using Lottie as the means to get it.”

“And at the same time making a very good husband to Lottie.”

“I know what you’re like. You’d never be faithful to her.”

He cocked an eyebrow and looked at me quizzically. “Infidelity … what does it matter if the wronged doesn’t know, eh? And it happens where you’d least expect it.”

He had silenced me, as he knew he would.

“But to marry like this … so calculatedly.”

“One should always calculate on important matters. Lottie wants it. I couldn’t achieve it otherwise, could I?”

“You have taken advantage of her youth to present yourself as some sort of hero.”

“I’m a buccaneer by nature. Lottie was a challenge. … I could never resist them. I’m sorry you’ve lost your doctor.”

“His death makes your blackmailing less effective. I have only myself to think of now. I do not care very much what happens to me. I am going to tell Lottie everything. I am going to tell her that you are blackmailing me … that you want to marry her solely because she is the heiress to Eversleigh. I could cut her out of my will.”

“To whom would you leave Eversleigh then? You couldn’t leave it outside the family, could you? Uncle Carl couldn’t, although he wanted it for his housekeeper-mistress. No … I’m the rightful heir. All the Eversleighs would rise up in their graves and tell you so. A bit of a rogue … but then most of us are. We are all sinners, even those who seem most virtuous. I’ll tell you something. It was your Miss Carter who started the fire at the hospital.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. I could have saved her … but she wouldn’t be saved. She was a challenge, wasn’t she? The prim virtuous spinster. It was wrong, I know … but I couldn’t resist.”

“You mean “that you … ?”

“Yes … you’ve guessed it. The lady lost her virginity at Clavering. I have a good line in seduction for earnest spinsters.”

“You are a fiend.”

“Yes, I am indeed. I was rather sorry afterwards, but you see, she was so pious. I just had to see if it worked. Of course she believed she was destined for hell fire afterwards. She was a little mad, you know. … Once when the gardeners at Clavering were burning leaves … she tried to leap into the fire. I saved her then … I talked to her … but she was bent on self-destruction. She need not have taken so many with her, but you see, in her eyes they were all wicked too, fallen women the lot of them … and the doctor … well, he had fallen from grace too, hadn’t he? I set her to spy on you. She knew that you and the doctor were lovers. She knew that there was something odd about the laudanum because when he was dead she saw the bottle on the table. All this she told me. … She was very loquacious on the subject of sin. Everybody around us was a sinner. I think she reveled in the sins of others because she believed herself to have sinned heinously and that she was lost to glory forever. She was a fanatic. I saw her standing on a ledge with a piece of burning wood, like a flaming torch, in her hand. She was waving it about and calling on God to witness her repentance. ‘Give me your hand,’ I said. ‘I can take you to safety’ and she answered: ‘Leave me alone. I may be saving my soul. I am expiating my sin by dying in this fire and taking other sinners with me.’”

“What a dreadful story.”

“It’s true. As for your Charles, I might have saved him too. But he was like the captain who won’t leave the sinking ship. Very noble, he was. … But then he was a sinner like the rest of us, wasn’t he? And like poor Madeleine he had some notion that he was expiating his sins. Dear Zipporah. We’re all sinners. Don’t condemn one because his sins are a little different from yours.”

“Oh, Dickon,” I said, “I’m so tired of you and your talk and your ways. All I want is for you to leave me in peace … with my daughter.”

“Be reasonable, dear Zipporah. Be sensible … and we shall all live happily ever after.”

It is hard to remember those days now. They seem so long ago. Each morning I awoke I thought:
Charles is dead. I am alone now.

Dickon went back to Clavering. He held my hands almost tenderly as he said good-bye.

“Don’t forget,” he said, “you hold your doctor’s good name in these hands. Your own too. Don’t throw it away. And don’t forget I want to please you.”

“You can do that by going away and never coming back.”

“You will feel differently one day. Now I must go and find my sweet Lottie. I will say au revoir to her and assure her of my undying devotion.”

How I hated him—handsome, debonair, so devastatingly attractive, the hero now to whom so many owed their lives. He had been so modest about his achievements—shrugging them aside as though saving life and playing the hero was commonplace with him.

With what relief I watched him ride away.

Now the days were long and meaningless. I felt that my visits to Isabel and Derek only saddened them because I reminded them of Charles.

Evalina came to see me to show me her bonny baby, of which she was very proud.

“The image of his dad,” she said. She regarded me with sympathetic eyes. “I was sorry about the doctor,” she said. “He was such a good man … a lovely man … but I always thought he was too serious for you. You want someone to make you laugh because you can be a bit too serious yourself. You want someone like that Frenchman … you remember?”

I wanted to shout to her to get out; but I knew she was only trying to cheer me up.

James Fenton was a very sad man. He had been genuinely fond of Jean-Louis. Sometimes he looked a little wistful and I wondered why.

I sounded Hetty and she told me that he had always wanted a farm of his own. Farming was his first love really. He just hadn’t wanted to share with anyone.

“Of course,” she said, “he has the money now.”

I said: “Does he want to go?”

Hetty answered firmly: “We’d never go as long as you needed us.”

I felt I should tell them to go and find their farm. I was sure it was what they wanted. Yet how could I manage without James?

Everything had changed now. I was alone.

I felt desolate. I had lost Jean-Louis and Charles, and even Lottie preferred to be with Dickon and was indeed planning the day when she would marry him—although so far in the future, and even she accepted that in view of her extreme youth.

My mother had been close to me in my childhood but when I married Jean-Louis and her lover Dickon came back—although he married Sabrina instead of her—I seemed to move into the background of her life. And on the birth of Sabrina’s son it was Dickon who claimed first place in her attentions.

I had been so loved … so wanted … and now I was a lonely woman.

I tried to look into the future. What was I going to do? Was I going to stand by and see Lottie marry Dickon? Or was I going to refuse my consent to the marriage, cut Lottie out of my will … and lose her forever. Although, of course, without Eversleigh she would not be so attractive to Dickon.

Whichever way I looked I was faced by a mighty dilemma. And there was no one to advise me.

Then one day when I sat in my bedroom there was a knock at my door and one of the maids entered to tell me that there was a visitor below to see me.

When I saw him standing in the hall my heart leaped with an excitement which I had not known for a long time.

He had changed a little. He was obviously older. He wore a neat wig, very white and wavy, which made his bright eyes seem darker than I remembered them. He held his feathered hat in his hand; his sword showed beneath his loose coat which had a more elegant cut than those I was accustomed to seeing.