The Prince of Eden (66 page)

"From the Countess Dowager," he muttered, thrusting the letter higher into the air, still keeping his back rigidly turned.

Of course, Harriet thought, and maintained her thin-lipped meekness by the door. In a way she was grateful. It was the first word he'd spoken to her in over six months.

"Do you care to read it?" he asked impatiently and shook the letter over his head.

"No," she murmured, and tried not to see him. He had suffered, was suffering, of that she was certain. She would never forget his face that morning when, summoned by the maid's cry, they had found her mother dead in her sleep, the mortification gone from her face, the prim little lace nightcap askew at an almost jaunty angle, as though to

inform one and all that at last she had escaped from this unpleasant world and all its accompanying embarrassments.

Strangely enough, her father's first reaction had resembled anger. Harriet had watched, helpless, as he'd lifted his frail wife into his arms and seemed to scold her for not having the courtesy of taking him with her. Then, with all the maids weeping, he had at last released her, turned to Harriet with a stricken face, and whispered, "If it were not for you, she would still be alive."

Remembering it all, Harriet bowed her head. Perhaps he had been right. Perhaps to her already burgeoning list of offenses could be added the designation of murderess.

"I think you should read it," her father continued, anger increasing. "It concerns you."

Harriet dragged her head upward from the weight of the past, resigned to the weight of the future. "I assume," she said, "that Lord Eden is getting impatient."

Abruptly her father slammed the letter down on the bureau. "He wants a wife," he pronounced and turned sharply in his chair and looked at her for the first time since she'd entered his study, a prolonged look tinged lightly with disbelief, as though confounded that any man would want the company of the creature now standing before him.

Harriet tried to relieve herself of such an expression by counting the red swirls in the Persian carpet at her feet.

Silence. Obviously his appalled amazement knew no bounds.

Finally, "Then shall I sign the agreement?" he demanded.

The red swirls were arranged in groups of three.

"Are you listening, Harriet?"

Intersecting were swirls of blues and greens.

''Harrietr

His anger had lifted him out of the chair. She was aware of him standing only a few feet away. "Sign what you wish, Papa," she whispered to the carpet.

"They want the wedding to take place within the month."

Within the month. Within the month, the final setting of the sun.

"Harriet, pay attention!" His rage drew him closer until at last he took her by the shoulders and shook her violently. Not until that moment did she recall how long it had been since he had touched her.

Belatedly he seemed aware of what he'd done and stepped quickly back, his old face still buffeted by sorrow and, now, mortified.

In an attempt to put him at ease, she repeated herself: "Sign what you wish, Papa."

For a moment he seemed to founder, reaching back for the support of his chair. "It's—for the best," he muttered.

"Yes."

"They will—treat you well."

"I'm certain of it."

His eyes lifted with a grieving expression. "There is nothing for you here."

The sentiment was softly spoken, as though with a weight of regret behind it. It almost undid her. "No," she quickly agreed. "Nothing here."

"Well, then."

He turned back to the bureau, withdrew fresh stationery, and commenced writing.

Within the month.

For a moment she felt her strength failing her. The hosts of loneliness were after her. There were monstrosities in her head, images of deformed beasts, of screaming women.

Turn back? Never! And anyway, why bother? Harriet Powels was dead, a most genteel and proper death, leaving no ugly corpse to dispose of, no line of mourners or dying flowers.

This dead woman still stood upright and even watched as her father signed his name to the agreement with great flourish as though for once and all dispatching a burdensome problem.

Harriet watched until the letter was completed, then she left the study and started up the stairs to her apartments, there to pack, to prepare herself for the imminent journey to Eden Point.

She walked slowly, head down, her eyes fixed on cold marble, as though she were following a wounded animal, by the droppings of his blood.

Sophia Cranford, garbed in her lavender best in honor of James's wedding day, paced restlessly in the cluttered confines of her private apartments. In the room beyond she heard Caleb putting the finishing touches to his grooming. Dear God, how weary she was of weak, spineless, vacillating men. And in a way, Caleb was no better than James. Indeed he'd sided with him in his stupid suggestion that they postpone the event scheduled to take place this day.

Postpone? Angrily she slapped her hands against the rustling lavender taffeta as though it too had offended her. Merciful heavens, they had come close to drowning in postponements during the last few years. First there had been the young Harriet's mysterious illness, then the King's death and the year of national mourning. Then another death. Lady Powels, Harriet's mother, and more mourning, more postponement until at last Sophia had taken matters into her own hands, had written to Lord Powels, supposedly on behalf of the senseless old Countess Dowager. And in this letter Sophia had informed Lord Powels that if a marriage did not take place by early spring. Lord James Eden would consider himself free of the promise and would look elsewhere for a wife.

Predictably that had provoked a response quick enough. Apparently the old widower, sick to death of his burdensome daughter, had laid down the law. And only yesterday morning the young woman had arrived in a single carriage, looking more a prisoner than a bride in the

company of two strapping male servants who had rudely deposited her with her trunks on the steps of the Great Hall.

Now merely thinking on all the circumstances gave Sophia an urge for haste. "Are you ready?" she called to the tardy Caleb. "It's approaching two. You should be down to greet the priest."

"In a moment," came the distant reply.

Merciful heavens, would he leave everything to her? Well, it would be done, she would see to it, James honorably wed to a good English name. And she didn't give a damn whether either of them desired it or not. Once they were wed, she was certain that nature would take its course. And hopefully, within the year, an heir would arrive, and hopefully also within the year, death, which had been so generously visiting others, would deign to pay a visit to Eden and take away that senseless old woman lying upstairs, the last stumbling block between Sophia and control of the Eden fortune.

Feeling a chill, she withdrew a gray shawl from the top of the cupboard—the old chapel would be cold with March dampness—and again cast a sideward glance toward the bedroom door. As she started out into the passage, on her way to greet the priest, it occurred to her that one of the first things she and Caleb should do when they came into their money was to purchase a fine carriage, finer horses, and pay a final visit to that bleak village in Yorkshire which had spawned them. Just a brief visit, of no real duration, to let the weak-spirited bastards see what had become of Parson Cranford's offspring.

As she walked down the corridor she felt something swelling in her throat and for the first time in her life felt herself on the verge of tears for no reason, no reason in the world, save happiness.

James Eden, Fourteenth Baron and Sixth Earl of Eden Point, felt completely baffled by the strange goings-on in which he was to play such an important part. Generally speaking, he disliked complications and understood them only in terms of livestock or a good racing horse.

Now as the steward began brushing back his hair, coated with oil, James felt a peculiar heaviness in his head. Quite frankly, he'd never expected to see the young woman again. It had been almost four years. What kind of love could be kept alive in that space and at that distance?

Seated in the chair before the glass, James closed his eyes to the fluttering hands of the steward. The most incongruous ideas were running through his mind. Once he had had a fierce desire to mount that cold lady. Once, four years ago at the engagement party, he'd been willing to play the husband. But not now. She'd arrived yesterday

like a corpse loosed from its coffin, so heavily veiled that he'd failed to get even one clear look at her.

From behind him, he heard the steward murmuring, "There, sir, quite elegant looking if you ask me."

James opened his eyes. Elegant looking? He looked as though he'd fallen head first into a bucket of lard.

"Anything else, my Lord?" the steward inquired, wiping the excess oil off his hands.

Unable to look at himself in the glass, he lowered his head. "Go along with you. You've done quite enough."

The man bowed low. "Then I shall return in half an hour and escort you to the chapel."

Abruptly James's anger surfaced. "Damn it, I know the way to the chapel."

"My apologies, sir, it's just that Miss Cranford—"

"Damn Miss Cranford," James shouted further, then caught himself, as though he'd uttered pure heresy. "I'll be there," he muttered again. "Leave me alone now."

As soon as the door had closed, he reached for a square of linen and frantically commenced wiping the oil from his hair. He shifted slightly in the chair—something was pinching his neck. The fool had tied the neck scarf too tightly. The linen in his hand fell to the floor as the blank gaze took on an expression of self-pity. If his father had lived, that might have made a difference. And as for his mother—

"Oh God," he groaned audibly and found himself wishing for his sister, Jennifer. On occasion she had soothed him.

Suddenly he lifted his face from his hands as though possessed of a healing idea. Of all three children, wasn't he, James, the only one on the straight and narrow? Wasn't he the only one content to stay at Eden, where they all belonged? The thought did bring comfort, though it was short-lived, for the truth was that the worst was yet to come.

Marriage! A life commitment. Abruptly he turned away from the glass as though to turn his back on both the image and the future.

She didn't love him, he knew that. And he did not love her. Then why? Why? The momentum of the unanswered question lifted him to his feet and carried him halfway to the door. Where was he going? It wasn't time yet. But still the momentum carried him forward until his hand was on the knob and there he stopped, consciously aware for the first time of his destination.

A small revolution, that's what it was. Sophia and Caleb would be furious if they found out. Perhaps he could go and come without being seen.

Now with a determined step, he opened the door and moved out into the corridor. It had been months since he'd seen her. At first they all had been kept out, on strict orders from the doctors. But now the doctors had departed and no one attended her but his old Aunt Jane and the decrepit Mrs. Greenbell.

His step increasing, he realized that he wanted to see her more than life itself. If Sophia found out and was furious, let her fury rage. A son had rights of access and perhaps during the time that he had stayed away from her chambers, God had intervened, had lifted the deadly seizure and had given her back her tongue.

In his anticipation of her presence, his hands were already outreach-ing, his mouth already whispering the name of the one person who might be able to answer some of his questions, to hold him and comfort him, to cover his forehead with cool kisses as she'd done when he was a child.

Even as he thought the name, his own painful sense of helplessness seemed to diminish. So he spoke it aloud now as he approached the door, the word evolving out of a long tortured breath, a simple word,

"Mother."

Poor Jane, Jane thought, as she sat before the fire in the sickroom. Look at her! Was this the woman who once had run one of the most notorious salons in all of London, who had served tea to Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens and a brilliant little man named Benjamin Disraeli?

Now? Look at her! Her gown was black, three days worn, and splattered with the remains of luncheon porridge. No more cerise. The spirit that required and supported cerise was gone. And her hair was ungroomed for a lost number of days. And her teeth pained her constantly.

Look at all of them for that matter. There opposite her at the fire, the rotund, dozing Mrs. Greenbell. Dear God, the only way they would ever know that the old woman was dead would be when her snores stopped. Well, she wasn't dead yet. The wheezing vibrations rose like minor thunder from her slack-jawed mouth. And limp in her lap was that damnable needlepoint. If she didn't die soon, the old hag would cover the entire world in needlepoint, carpet the headlands with it, drape it over the sides of Eden Point, and hang it from the dome of St. Paul's to Tower Hill.

Still Jane felt magnanimous. The old woman was company, could talk, unlike— Slowly her head lifted toward the grand rosewood bed.