House of Masques (10 page)

He took her arm and led her back to the buggy, all the while shaking his head. “A trickster, a charlatan,” he said. Kathleen smiled to herself.
You may scoff
, she thought.
I'll wait and see.

They drove in silence under the hot midday sun.
Tonight
, Kathleen told herself.
I must get ready for the ball, lay out my clothes, bathe, roll my hair in curl papers. And hide the gun.

The horse's hooves pounded on the dirt road and she leaned back and closed her eyes. She felt lightheaded. As she swayed with the motion of the buggy she repeated the gypsy's words to herself. “A return to the beginning…a surpassing love…clouds without rain…great danger.”

The masquerade. Would the prophecy begin to come true that night at the masquerade?

Chapter Ten

“Beautiful. You look beautiful,” Clarissa told her. Kathleen had found the sick woman sitting up in bed with her golden hair loose and flowing over the pillow. Although her pain was gone, she remained pale and weak. In reply to Kathleen's question, Clarissa told her she had begun to drink the milk the night before but soon set the glass aside because of the bitter taste.

“I wish you were coming to the ball with me,” Kathleen said, feeling nervous and unsure.

“Don't fret, you're a lovely young lady. I'll be able to go another time. I've lived this long without seeing a masquerade, I'll get by awhile longer.” Her words were without bitterness, and when Kathleen left she was drowsily leafing through a worn Bible she had brought from Gleneden.

Kathleen heard the hall clock chime the hour as she returned to her room. Nine o'clock. She was ready, having dressed without seeking help from any of the maids, for she wanted no one except Clarissa and Edward to know her disguise.

She went to the mirror. Was she beautiful? No, she decided, but she knew she looked different tonight. She turned first to the right, then the left, making the hundreds of glass beads on her blue skirt sparkle in the light from the lamp. Was the neckline of the snug-fitting bodice too low? She found the bareness extending from her neck to the upper swell of her bosom startling.

Kathleen touched the hair which she had drawn away from her face and gathered with a clip at the back of her head. Tight curls dusted with gold powder cascaded over her shoulders. As she adjusted a silver tiara on the front of her hair an insistent tapping sent her to the door.

It was Edward Allen. His knee-breeches, waistcoat, cape, and mask were an unrelieved black, his ruffled shirt white. A sword hung at his side. Without the beard he looked like a younger Dr. Gunn, for now the dark hair was untouched with gray.

Edward scrutinized Kathleen, from the tiara on her head to the white ballroom slippers on her feet. “Ahhh,” he said, nodding with approval, “truly a fairy princess. All you need is a magic wand.”

“And you? Do you come from a book of fairy tales, too?”

“No,” he said, “but a prince all the same. This is my interpretation of Hamlet. A prince to escort a princess.” He removed his mask. A handsome man, Edward Allen, she thought. Again she was troubled by his resemblance to a picture glimpsed long ago.

“I know,” she said. “I've remembered who you remind me of.”

“Who?” he asked sharply. His face became pale and cold.

“In part it's your name. You look like a daguerreotype of Poe I once saw in a book of poems. And your names are so familiar—Edward Allen, Edgar Allan.”

He relaxed. “I'm flattered,” he said with a smile. “I'll admit a few others have remarked a resemblance. I'm taller than Poe, I think, and my hair doesn't curl like his did.” Edward offered her his arm. “Shall we go?”

“Wait.” Kathleen went to the dresser and returned with a short wooden rod. “I do have a magic wand. Josiah thought of everything.” She touched him on the shoulder with the silver tip. “You may have three wishes,” she said. “You'll be given whatever you want.”

“Whenever I want…” He grimaced. “My first choice is impossible,” he said. “I can't change the past no matter how much I might want to.”

“Make a wish,” she said softly.

“My wish is a wish for you,” he said. He placed his hand on her forearm and she began to pull away, but something in his eyes stopped her. “Because you're so young,” he went on, “and have so much of life before you, I wish you the most elusive gift of all. I wish you happiness.” She looked at him in surprise. His voice was low and earnest and for the first time she warmed toward him, wondered about him as a person. She covered his hand with hers.

“Thank you, Edward,” she said. Looking into his hazel eyes, Kathleen sensed the presence of a deep hurt.
Can I help him?
she asked herself. Edward pulled his mask down over his eyes. Putting on the mask seemed to change him, make him more remote, turn him once again into an enigma. The moment of warmth was gone. She handed him her white mask and turned so he could tie the bow at the back of her head.

Edward, his black cape flowing behind him, led her along echoing corridors. They found the narrow passages of the old section of the house empty. The servants, she supposed, were helping at the ball, or had gathered on the porch to watch the guests arrive.

The hall ended in a paneled wall. Two corridors, one leading to the front, the other to the rear, branched off at right angles.

“The ballroom is on the other side of this wall,” he told her. “A huge place, three stories high, extending the whole depth of the house. One of the young maids was kind enough to show me through yesterday.”

They followed the passage to the front of the house where they stopped before a large leaded window to look down at the driveway. Lanterns bobbed from wires strung between the trees, and Kathleen watched the carriage of a late arrival drive through a fantasy of many-colored lights.

“This way,” Edward whispered, guiding her into a cranny from which a metal spiral staircase circled to the lower floors. One, two, three, she began counting the steps. She had reached eighteen when Edward stopped in front of a closed door. A muffled hum came from the other side. When he edged the door open she heard the murmur of voices and the lilt of a waltz.

She followed him through the doorway into a darkened hall where, some twenty feet ahead, she saw the ebb and flow of couples in the light from the entrance. “Take my arm,” he told her. Together they walked from the shadows into the entryway and turned through an arch to the ballroom. The splendor took her breath away.

They were standing on a raised gallery which extended to the walls on either side and then along the entire length of the room. The scene reminded Kathleen of an oil painting, the colors mingling with one another, the smoke from the cigars hazing the air, a myriad of candies flickering in the magnificent tiers of chandeliers above their heads, gaslights in gilt holders along the walls, the dancers below, masked, elaborately costumed, whirling to the rhythm of the waltz. Kathleen's head pulsed with the music. Her breath quickened.

On the gallery along the sides of the room older women sat in round-backed chairs staring reminiscently at the dancers. On the tables adjoining the floor Kathleen saw glasses, bottles of champagne, fans, and purses. Directly across from her the orchestra formed an island of black and white. Through the open French doors on both sides of the musicians' platform she could see the balcony which she knew extended out from the rear of the house.

As Edward stepped forward with her to the stairs the music stopped and the dancers applauded. Kathleen had the feeling all eyes in the ballroom turned to them. “Who are they?” she imagined the women whispered behind their fans as they appraised this strange dark prince and his princess.

Edward lowered his arm to slide his hand over hers and pulled her onto the floor. What was this lively tune? “I can't,” she protested. “I've never danced a polka.”

“Follow my lead,” he told her and after a few moments she matched him step for step.

The music went on and on. Kathleen danced a waltz, a quadrille, another waltz, another polka. The pattern repeated—waltz, quadrille, waltz, polka. Costumed men crowded about her between dances. They laughed, flirted, thrust punch into her hand. She became warm, lightheaded, the other dancers were a blur, as though the colors of a painting had run together in the heat. Where was Captain Worthington? She searched the masked faces of the men.

She observed a cadet standing alone, seemingly aloof, one of the few unmasked guests. Recognition stirred in Kathleen's mind. Ah, she knew. The blond horseman who smiled and tipped his hat to her at the Fourth of July parade.

“He's not wearing a costume,” she said to the heavy-set riverboat pilot who was her partner. “Is it against West Point regulations?”

He followed her gaze. “Not that I know of,” the pilot said. “I don't know why Worthington invited him. He's one of the most disliked men in the Corps. Last year he reported six other cadets he claimed cheated on examinations. They were all dismissed.”

Edward Allen danced by, cocky, almost prancing about the floor as if he had been freed from bondage. His eyes glittered behind his mask. He was, she thought, more at ease when playing a role. When wasn't he playing a role? The coachman, Dr. Gunn, the prince. Was any one of them the real Edward Allen? Or was each a different facet of the man? Kathleen was slowly finding her rejection of Edward changing to a grudging admiration.

Later, while she waltzed with a man whose clumsiness belied his costume of a French dancing master, the blond cadet whirled by with a short blonde girl. He looked intently at Kathleen, as though trying to pierce through her disguise. “A wonderful fellow,” her partner said. “When some of the cadets tried to give the silent treatment to one of the new Negro cadets, he fought for the Negro's right to be at the Point.”

At last Edward Allen reclaimed her. His face was flushed and the limp she had suspected before was now pronounced. They left the floor when the dance ended. Exhilarated from the champagne and the music, she wanted to run and skip, felt like playing as she had when she was a child. She remembered Michael calling to her from the far bank of the brook while she leaped from rock to rock trying to follow him.

She and Edward paused to look back from the gallery. On the platform at the far end of the room Kathleen saw a tall man in green bend forward to talk to the leader of the orchestra. Despite his mask she knew him at once. Charles Worthington. As she recognized Charles the image of Michael faded and she heard his voice become faint, calling to her from farther and farther away while she remained frozen, afraid to leap over the last churning expanse of water.

Edward started to follow when she left him to walk across the floor. “No, stay here,” she told him and he turned back. Couples waiting for the music to begin moved aside to form a twisting passage. The room seemed darker. She was perplexed until she looked above her head to find that many of the candles in the chandeliers had guttered out, while others burned fitfully.

She walked as though in a trance, her sensations dreamlike. Unreal and distorted. The memory of her nightmare returned and the Indian loomed in her mind. Once more she ran from the horrors of the sod house. Once more she heard the awful clawing beneath the mound of earth.

The dancers clustering about her whispered among themselves. Behind the masks their narrowed eyes followed her.
Accusing me
, she thought.
Accusing me of vacillation, of procrastination, of cowardice.
Kathleen sensed a movement. She glanced to the far end of the room in time to see a tall young man remove his mask. She shivered and her legs felt weak. Although the revealed face was featureless, Kathleen knew him: Michael.

Another man on the opposite side of the ballroom yanked off his mask. She stopped, staring. No, she thought. She wanted to cover her face with her hands. Impossible, this must be another dream. A dream, she repeated, saying the word over and over like an incantation—a dream, a dream, a dream. The second face had been blurred but unmistakable: Michael.

One man after another slipped his mask from his head and she saw the same face again and again, the same eyes, her brother's eyes, wide and staring. She wanted to rush from the room but knew she must not, knew she must force her trembling legs to go the last few paces to where Charles stood.

She was almost to the musicians when Charles looked up. He saw her and stiffened, then slowly stepped from the platform with his hand extended. He wore a loose green jacket, matching trousers, and a brown cap with a feather on one side. Arrow shafts protruded from a quiver slung over his shoulder.

Charles tucked her hand under his arm as though they were old friends and walked with her through the French doors. The air on the balcony was still and close. She looked anxiously about, relieved to find they were alone. Behind them the orchestra began a Viennese waltz.

The moonless night crouched just beyond the ballroom's halo of light. That night the darkness of the outbuildings and the trees seemed more comforting to Kathleen than the bright ballroom with its many phantoms.

As she left Charles to walk beside the high stone railing, Kathleen counted the posts with her hand. She stopped at the seventh and turned to lean with her back against, the banister. Charles still stood by the door, his mask in one hand. He swallowed and she saw the muscles of his face grow taut. Shadows rimmed his eyes.

“My masquerade is a great success,” he said. His voice was controlled and without enthusiasm. Yet she thought she detected a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “And now,” he went on, “I find myself with the most beautiful of all my guests. Though, I suspect, an uninvited one.”

Kathleen let her wand fall to the stout pavement. As she knelt to retrieve it she reached behind her, fingers feeling along the rough stone, beneath the leaves, until they closed over the hidden revolver. She stood and faced him, the gun held before her in both hands. She cocked the hammer with her thumb.

“So this is how it ends,” he said, walking slowly toward her. “Are you really going to shoot, Miss Stuart?”

She gasped. He had recognized her.

“Or,” he said, “should I use your real name?”

“My real name? What do you mean?” A church bell began to toll the hour.

“Kathleen Donley, I believe.” She could feel the gun heavy in her shaking hands.

“H-how did you know?” she asked.

“Your brother Michael kept a miniature,” he said. “An excellent likeness.”

“You killed Michael,” she accused him. “You killed him, didn't you?” She expected a denial, thought he would try to put her off with words. Did she want him to explain, to excuse himself? To prevent her from firing the gun?