The Women of Eden (76 page)

Mary tried to hide a smile, and tried even harder to still those sen-sate points within her.

"I'm afraid they're determined to keep us proper," he muttered. "Wait a minute," he called out to the closed door, then returned for a final kiss and whispered plea. "Marry me soon," he begged, "and I'll put a bolt on that door, and anyone who knocks will do so at their own risk!"

"Mr. Burke, are you in there? I know you are!"

In answer to Florence's insistent voice, Burke stood up from the bed and shouted, "I'm coming!" At the door he looked back at her, the longing clear in his face. "Sleep well. Tomorrow we'll make plans."

She nodded and rejoined the loosened buttons, sensing that a puritan would shortly enter the room.

And she did. As her sharp old eyes darted about, Florence stepped briskly past Burke and carried a dinner tray to the side of the bed. "Soup," she pronounced flatly. "And I brought you a nightdress."

"Thank you," Mary murmured, pushing up to a sitting position. At the door she saw Burke still watching.

Florence saw him as well. "You run along now, Mr. Burke," she

scolded, as though he were a boy of five. "Charles is waiting to tend you."

Burke nodded, though he lingered long enough to throw her a kiss, which she received gratefully before turning her attention to the fussy old woman who was moving a small table to the edge of the bed, then placing the dinner tray on it.

"Eat!" she commanded. "Ain't enough flesh on you for a man to grab hold of."

As she finished the broth and permitted Florence to undress her, she felt a curious lassitude extend to all parts of her mind and body. For the first time in her life she enjoyed an almost dazzling simplicity of vision. There was only one path that led to only one future. And both led to Burke. Her days as a fugitive were over. She was connected in heart and soul and mind and, one day soon, body. Never again would the world change its shape. It was fixed and she with it, and, while there might be hazards like Caroline Stanhope, there would never again be terror or defeat.

Garbed in the clean white nightdress, she lay back against the pillows, her eyes heavy with sleep.

"Thank you," she murmured to the woman standing at the foot of the bed. She had wanted to say more, but her mind called a recess and she slipped instantly into a healing sleep, the long nightmare over, her head filled with luminous dreams.

She awakened to darkness, though beyond the window she saw the first pale streaks of light altering the night sky. She lay still, not absolutely certain where she was. As the familiar contours of the room appeared before her, she sat up, feeling remarkably restored.

She dressed quickly in the chill room, drawing on the black dress for what she hoped would be the last time. Never had she felt so suffused with love. She wanted to explore everything—the house, the gardens, the closed rooms which she'd observed the night before.

Thus dressed and groomed to the best of her ability, she stood and pondered the miracle of her resurrection. The clock was ticking on the bureau. Six-thirty. From someplace in the house she smelled the good odor of breakfast. She was starved. And was Burke still abed? He won't be for long, she thought, and smiled mischievously as she pondered the countless ways in which she might awaken him. How was it possible that her existence less than a month ago had been unbearable? How was any of it possible, that she would be standing

here, her heart filled to such an extent that she felt tears in her eyes. Happiness was as great a hazard as grief. Both had to be assimilated gradually.

Ready for movement, for the sound of human voices, for the touch of a specific hand, she took a last look in her glass and saw her face bathed in the rosy light of dawn and hurried out into the corridor where she saw Florence just climbing the stairs, bearing a heavily laden tray which gave off irresistible odors, and heading toward the closed double doors which led to Mrs. Stanhope's chambers.

"Florence, waitl" she called out, and saw the old woman glance surprised in her direction.

"You're up and about early," she scolded, climbing to the top of the stairs, where she paused for breath.

Mary smiled. "I slept the night through, and I've never felt better, thanks to you and your kindness."

Embarrassed, Florence ducked her head and covered the moment with characteristic gruffness. "Well, you'll have to wait your turn for breakfast. This here is for Mrs. Stanhope. She's—"

An idea occurred to Mary. "Let me take it in," she suggested.

"Oh, no, I couldn't-"

"Please, Florence," she begged. "I used to take my mother her breakfast and nothing pleased her more."

Still the old woman hesitated. But the idea had taken root in Mary's head. Perhaps in the kindness of an early-moming encounter, the harshness of last evening would be forgotten.

"Please, Florence. It's important to me."

At last the old woman relented. "Well, I'm not saying she's going to like it," she muttered, passing the tray over to Mary. "She likes things the way she's been accustomed to them, but maybe—**

"Thank you."

"See to it that she eats, you hear?" Florence added, pushing open the door for Mary to pass through. Without warning the stern face softened. "She always wanted a daughter. I've heard her say it thousands of times."

Grateful for the supportive words, Mary smiled her thanks, renewed her grasp on the tray and turned to face the large chamber which, to her surprise, was aglow with every lamp burning.

Mary glanced at the four-poster at the end of the room and saw only a mound of down comforts, three or four at least, and remem-

bered how her mother used to complain of night cold, something about the blood thinning with age, she assumed.

The weight of the tray was beginning to make her arms tremble and she moved toward the bed, never taking her eyes off the still head resting on the pillow.

Carefully she placed the tray on the bedside table, monitoring that face closely for signs of consciousness. Still sleeping? Then how to awaken her gently with news of breakfast and soft reassurances that she'd come in love?

She stepped back from the table and was just approaching the side of the bed when her foot struck something. Looking down, she saw a glint of silver, a familiar carved ivory handle, the paring knife which she recognized from the night before. Stooping to retrieve it, her hand was just going down when she noticed what appeared to be moisture, something red and glistening slipping out from underneath the comforts, culminating in a slight though steady stream.

Her hand, still moving toward the knife, altered its course. Two fingers moved toward the curious moisture, touched it, then slowly drew back and presented themselves for her inspection.

It was sticky, quite thick, like-Suddenly she looked up to the side of the bed, traced the river to its source someplace beneath the comforts, her mind unfortunately moving ahead of her hand, connecting instantly the presence of the knife with—

No!

Had she screamed? Someone was screaming. Yet why did she seem blanketed in silence, and why was she drawing back the comforts to see what she had already seen, those thin arms l}dng limp beside that skeletal body, the comforts, the ivory dressing gown, everj^thing, floating in blood, the wTists severed, turned upward at a rigid angle, as though she were a suppHcant presenting evidence of her deed to a higher authority.

Reflexively, Mary stepped back from the horror, though the sight followed after her, boring into her brain. Quickly she reached out for the bedposts in need of support. As she grabbed hold, the bed moved, the head on the pillow stirred, as though she were awakening from a night's sleep.

The mysterious screams inside Mary's head had grovra silent and all she heard now was a child whimpering, a sound so slight that it could not begin to drown out the terror coming from the bed, the

old woman staring up at her from out of a sunken face. Her eyes opened and fixed on Mary. "I—had hoped you would come in time, and now you have."

In response Mary shook her head, as though with that simple movement to deny what she saw, what she heard.

"You see, my dear," the old woman went on with effort, "I could never compete with you alive. But dead—" A radiant smile covered those colorless features. "Dead, I'll defeat you. My ghost will lie between you and my son every night. At first he will blame himself. But he will blame you in the end, and how wretched you both will be!"

"No, please-"

"I—wish you only—heartache." The woman sighed. Suddenly her fingers curled in a convulsive movement, the blood spilling out from her wrists increased. In a final effort she turned her head until she was facing Mary directly, her eyes opened, though fixed and staring.

Clinging to the post, Mary tried to back away from that gaze. But she seemed to be locked on the horror, all breath deserting her, as recently it had deserted the old woman.

The child was whimpering again, a mindless repetition of one word. 'TSIo. No. No—" The rest of the chamber fell away, and she was left suspended on one small high pinnacle, clinging to the post, knowing that if she moved in any direction she, too, would fall.

Yet, given a conscious choice between those staring eyes and that dead face smiling, she willingly chose the abyss and took the distressed child with her and felt herself spiraling through a black emptiness which, though frightening, was preferable to the world she'd left behind. . . .

Two weeks after Caroline Stanhope's funeral, John Thadeus Delane sat in the library of the Mayfair house and silently thanked whatever God had looked over him all these years for sparing him the agony of a passionate love.

The face opposite him on the sofa bore no resemblance to the man he'd known as a boy. This face, lined with recent grief and new worry, belonged to an old man who had, on too many occasions, been pushed to the limits of endurance.

"What precisely is it that you want me to do, Burke?" he prodded gently.

When Burke did not answer, Delane leaned back against the cush-

525 ions, relying on the philosophy that had served him well all his life. Put everything into perspective, then form as objective a judgment as possible.

This, then, was Delane's dispassionate judgment: with the exception of Caroline Stanhope's suicide, the whole affair had all the melodramatic aspects of a penny novel—the abducted female spirited out from under the nose of her keeper, a romantic illness in a country inn, the invalid brought back and ensconced in her lover's house, where now she suffered a setback, a mysterious illness beyond the diagnostic powers of modem medicine.

Pleased with his sensible assessment, Delane looked at his friend and felt his pleasure diminishing. There was nothing false or melodramatic about that face, his jaw lined with a stubble of rough beard, his hands visibly trembling as he shielded his eyes from the midmorning sun.

Moved by the sight in spite of his objectivity, Delane leaned tor-ward, ready to help in whatever way he could, though his initial impulse was to lecture. Hadn't he warned Burke months ago agamst any involvement with the Eden girl? "What can I do?" he asked simply. "For your own good you must find relief soon."

Burke lowered his hands, revealing every detail of his face, the eyes heavy from lack of sleep. He had been a model of strength at his mother's funeral. The disintegration had commenced later with the girl's mysterious illness, the inability of the doctors to help her.

Standing before Delane, he requested, "Will you see her? Please?

Everything in Delane resisted. "I'm not a medical man."

"I trust your judgment."

"I don't even know what to look for."

"I did not bring her all this way to lose her!"

"You should never have become involved in the first place.

"I had no choice." ,

There was something helpless in Burke's voice that suggested he had never spoken a greater truth.

Then nothing to do but go and play medical man. As he rose from the sofa it occurred to him that he was curious about this cousm of John Murrey Eden's, this remarkable young woman who had captured the heart of one of London's most pre-eminent bachelors.

With a look of gratitude Burke led the way up the stairs, where thev encountered Florence just coming down, her normally neutral face showing the strain of this household for the last few weeks.

"I bathed her, Mr. Burke," she said, "but she wouldn't eat."

Burke nodded, a resignation in his manner which suggested he'd heard those words before. Halfway up the stairs, his pace slowed and, with rising sympathy, Delane tried to move him rapidly past the closed door which had been his mother's death chamber. The young Eden woman had discovered her, or so Burke had told him the day of the funeral.

Delane stared at the closed door, suffering a sudden understanding of Mary Eden's illness. He'd seen severed wrists before. Only last year Lord Addison had chosen the method rather than facing the scandal of adultery. Delane had been one of the first on the scene. The image had stayed with him for weeks.

Then they were standing before a smaller door at the end of the corridor, and the sense of the moment grew strong within him. If another death occurred—and what a spectacular death this one would be, John Murrey Eden descending like a wrath from God, the scandal of Mary Eden ensconced in Burke's household.

As the potential for disaster thundered down upon him, Delane pushed open the door of his own accord, though just inside the door he stopped and allowed Burke to take the lead, as he willingly did, the small figure on the bed drawing him forward like a magnet.

Delane followed as far as the foot of the bed and stopped, staring down on the young woman, her eyes closed.

"Mary?" The voice was Burke's, who sat on the edge of the bed and lifted one hand and enclosed it between his own. "Mary, can you hear me?"

Watching, Delane had the feeling that she could. Her head turned in the direction of the voice, her eyes opened, then closed, as though the voice were a part of her nightmare.