The House of Closed Doors (4 page)

“Sometime at the end of May. Elizabeth will write when she knows exactly.”

“Well then, Mama. The roads will be perfectly dry by then. You know very well that May is often a beautiful month, and there are no indications that spring will be late‌—‌why, the snow is nearly gone already.”

“I am sure you are right, my darling. Oh, Nell, that handkerchief is going to be perfectly adorable! For whom do you intend it?”

“Maybe I will make one each for my cousins; what do you think of that?”

My mother’s face lit up in one of her radiant, sweet smiles. “I cannot think of a better gift. But you must also make something for Cousin Jack; perhaps some plain gentleman’s handkerchiefs?”

“Jack will be there too?”

“Of course; and since we last saw him he has quite grown up and been a soldier, so we will not recognize him.”

“Do soldiers need fine handkerchiefs, Mama?” I asked absently, making minute snips at the cutwork border of the piece I was fashioning.

Mama laughed, a merry sound against the dull beat of the rain. “Now, Nell, you are being a goose. The War has been over for four years, after all. Ah, those terrible years… I am grateful that Chicago was so little affected.”

“So Jack is out of uniform?” I hid a yawn behind my hand. As usual, Mama’s train of thought was beginning to drift, and I was tiring of the subject of Cousin Jack.

“Oh, for some time, my dear. Apprenticed at a legal office, Elizabeth tells me, and soon to begin his career as an attorney.”

“Doesn’t he have enough money to live on already?”

Mama screwed up her face in consternation. “A man must do something in life, I suppose. He will be quite the gentleman by now, and, yes, of course he will carry at least two handkerchiefs.” Miraculously, Mama had come back to the point. So the matter was settled, and I spent one blustery week in late April embroidering “JHV” on six large squares of soft white lawn.

Elizabeth, Florence, and Henrietta were true first cousins to me. My mother’s sister Caroline had disturbed the family’s equilibrium by marrying Barnabus Venton when he owned only three carts and was therefore beneath her. After Caroline’s death from influenza, Uncle Barney, by now a rich merchant, had married Aunt May, who had given birth to Jack before succumbing to childbed fever.

My mother had been fond of Barney, whose puckish features and wild sense of humor hid a deeply loving heart and a fierce intelligence in all business matters. He had died during the War. I last saw Uncle Barney at my father’s and brother’s funeral, surrounded by his three grown daughters and Jack, a self-assured, twelve-year-old princeling who could not quite hide his embarrassment at his father’s rustic manners. I had been six, and tearful, and Jack had ignored me.

FOUR

C
ousin Jack did not ignore me this time. In retrospect, I might have wished he had. I didn’t even see him at first when my cousins arrived, because his sisters‌—‌all fair, all rather fat, and all complaining bitterly about the state of the roads‌—‌burst from the carriage they’d hired in Chicago like a flight of exotic birds. I was submitting to perfumed hugs and surreptitiously studying their expensive traveling dresses for details I could adapt to my own when my hand was suddenly grasped by a strong masculine one, and I felt warm breath and the tickle of a silky mustache on my knuckles.

“Little Cousin Nellie,” said a pleasant, deep voice in a tone of ironic amusement, and I looked up‌—‌not too far up, as I am tall and Jack was not quite six feet‌—‌into a pair of jade-colored eyes with strange black flecks in them.

As a little girl, I had found Jack impressive, if supercilious. His sisters adored him and waited on him as if he were the President himself, and he had that facile cleverness and athletic strength that gives a boy of twelve an aura of youthful glory. With the addition of eleven years, eighty pounds of muscle, and a respectable, if short, battlefield career as an infantry officer, Jack’s impressiveness had soared to new heights.

I do believe that I blushed; certainly, something Jack saw in my face made him show all of his white teeth in a broad grin. He made the usual remarks about how I had grown and how womanly I looked, but they were swallowed up in the bustle of unloading the carriage and showing the ladies their rooms. Jack was staying at Bettle’s Hotel; our house was not particularly large.

At dinner I sat between Elizabeth and Henrietta watching my mother’s face, glowing with happiness, and Hiram’s performance of joviality. My stepfather, when he wished, could be a most hospitable and urbane man, and I found myself laughing at his polite jokes as much as at the exaggerated responses of my female cousins.

In the midst of all this jollity I suddenly received the distinct impression that Cousin Jack was looking at me and decided to try one of my favorite tricks. I dipped my head and raised my eyelids slowly, favoring him with the full force of my eyes‌—‌which are quite remarkable, being very large and a brilliant, deep blue with sparkling depths of green, like sea-glass.

As I’d thought, he’d been looking at me. I held his gaze for just a second and saw something‌—‌was it respect?‌—‌blend with the amusement in his eyes. I looked down at my plate, pleased with myself, enjoying the buzzing sense of exhilaration in my stomach. The game had begun.

T
hat week was one long flirtation, although we were both careful to keep our growing attraction out of sight of everyone around us. I most emphatically did not want Mama or my cousins noticing an “attachment” between us and jumping to matrimonial conclusions. On the face of it, the match would be excellent; Jack and I were not related by blood, and there was a substantial sum of money in trust for him pending his marriage, or thirtieth birthday.

Yet as much as I appreciated his muscular build, his crisply curled, sun-streaked hair, and those compelling jade-green eyes, in no way did I intend to become the wife of John Harvey Venton. To be sure, the society of Hartford, Connecticut, was bound to be far more extensive and exciting than that of Victory; but there was a whole world to be explored, and a week’s delicious flirtation with the most mature, attractive unmarried man who had ever crossed my path did not tempt me to tie myself for life to a husband and home.

As for Jack, no word of love ever crossed his lips. He spoke to me of art, of beauty, of the pleasures of youth and freedom‌—‌yes, that was a definite hint that he wished to remain unattached‌—‌and of the fellows at the law office where he was apprenticed. He wished to make his mark in the world, he told me, in a highly respectable profession that would open the doors of society everywhere. He never said so, but I knew he meant to erase completely the stain of trade from a family fortune built in the haulage business. I was glad that Uncle Barney was no longer alive to see how much his son despised him.

When Jack and I could snatch a few minutes‌—‌or even seconds!‌—‌alone, his hands would steal round my waist and his lips would be pressed to my neck or my cheek and sometimes even lightly touch my own lips. He was far bolder than any other young man of my acquaintance and seemed to know exactly how to touch me to set my blood on fire. When we were with the others, we kept up a constant play of surreptitious glances and seemingly accidental brushes of the hand that made my skin tingle and sent delicious flashes like lightning through my belly and down my legs. Looking back, I cannot imagine how we managed to hide this love-play from the rest of the family, so brightly did our flame seem to burn amid their commonplace lives.

The May weather connived with our pleasure in each other. The sun beat down warmly, soft breezes stirred the air, and the pathways through the woods and by the river were quite dry and most suitable for frequent country rambles. White and dusky red trilliums spangled the woodland floor, marsh marigolds shone brilliant gold in the damp hollows, jack-in-the-pulpits were beginning to raise their hooded heads, and the deer that had escaped the hunters in the fall could be glimpsed staring shyly at us from a safe distance. Elizabeth, Florence, and Henrietta exclaimed loudly‌—‌and somewhat insincerely‌—‌about the rural beauties of our little corner of the Middle West, while behind their backs Jack slid his warm, bare hand along my arm and my body shook with suppressed laughter and desire.

We spent most of the week in the company of my mother, her friend Ruth, and others of their generation, but for the last day of their visit, my cousins had decided that a picnic “for the young people” would be just the thing. Elizabeth, Florence, and Henrietta apparently still saw themselves as young, however staid and matronly they may have appeared to my eyes. The rest of the party was composed of about twenty sundry youths from a ten-mile radius around Victory, and my married cousins were our notional chaperones.

I was wearing, for the first time, a particularly fetching summer dress in a wonderful blue sprigged pattern I had found in Rutherford’s store. Next to my cousins’ fashionable furbelows it must have looked quite provincial, but I had the advantage of youth and a slender figure. And I had sewn this particular dress with a slightly roomier, lightly boned waist so that I could go uncorseted; there was nothing I disliked more than a corset in the hot weather. Mama would always scold me if I went without, but I was slim and firm-fleshed enough that, with the right tailoring, I could disguise my incorrect dress. And Marie knew I would never let her lace me tight, as fashion dictated. I liked to be able to breathe.

And there was, perhaps, a subliminal reason for my uncorseted state. The night before I had opted to retire early but slipped down to the kitchen to refill my water jug. Marie had forgotten, and I didn’t bother to ring for her. It was fortunate that I had put the jug on the table to read a printed advertisement from Rutherford’s about summer hats, because I certainly would have dropped it when two warm hands stole around my waist. Jack pulled me close to him and gently kissed the skin below my ear, murmuring, “Little Nellie Lillington,” and I felt the tip of his tongue touch my skin. He pulled away and was gone as silently as he’d arrived but not before I felt his strong hands caress my uncorseted body, a hitherto unknown delight. One more day stood between me and my cousins’ departure, and I was hoping to experience that sensation once more.

I was not disappointed. The day was very warm but did not yet hold the stifling heat of summer, and there were not, as yet, any mosquitoes, so to be outdoors was heavenly. Among our group of young people were several couples determined to evade our chaperones so that they could hold hands and gaze into each others’ eyes in some quiet woodland spot. A mute complicity seemed to exist between the young lovers and the single people in the group; the latter gathered round the three matrons and besieged them with requests for news of the East. What was in the shops? The theater? Was there any new slang? I could hear my cousins’ shrill laughter as they tried to supply answers to the onslaught of questions and smiled as I saw at least two young couples head deeper into the woods.

Jack and I drifted off toward the riverbank, where a growth of young willows made a most excellent screen from prying eyes. Jack pulled me into his arms and kissed me, lightly at first and then with increasing pressure. I had never experienced this kind of kissing before and had not realized that such an enjoyable experience could go on for so long. I soon began to feel quite lightheaded. In addition, Jack’s hands had become increasingly bold and were encountering regions of my body that were, shall we say, unexplored territory. Soon I became oblivious of the distant sounds of our companions and even of the rushing of the river. If I opened my eyes for a moment, I saw the sun shining in flashes through the pale, young leaves of the willows, but what Jack was doing soon absorbed my whole attention.