House of Masques (11 page)

Instead of a protest, he nodded. “Yes, I did. I killed him.”
He does look like a young Lincoln
, she thought irrelevantly.

“Pull the trigger,” Charles Worthington murmured. “Pull the trigger.” He was almost upon her.

The gun roared. The explosion deafened her, rattled the windows of the house. Someone screamed. The music wavered to an uncertain close. Men and women crowded to the French doors. Smoke from the exploding powder hung in the air.

The gun dropped and she grasped the railing with both hands. The last notes of the church bell faded as she stood staring straight ahead. Her sobs were the only sounds in the quiet night.

Chapter Eleven

As Kathleen pulled the trigger two events occurred almost simultaneously. Charles, whose body was only inches from the muzzle, threw himself to the ground, where he landed on his hands and knees. At the same time Kathleen swung the revolver down and to the side, so the bullet ricocheted harmlessly past him.

She dropped the gun and leaned on the balcony. Charles scrambled to his feet, then bent to snatch the weapon from the ground and slip it into his pocket.

Brushing himself off, he faced the costumed men and women crowding from the ballroom.

“Don't be alarmed,” he told them, “no one's hurt. I was showing the young lady my Army revolver. Go back inside, everything's all right.” He smiled while he walked, arms outstretched, toward the French door and turned the attention of his guests back to the dance. After what seemed an interminable time, but was probably only a few minutes, she heard the music resume.

Kathleen was momentarily stunned, without feeling. She hugged herself as a chill spread through her and she began to shake, an uncontrollable trembling of her entire body. At one and the same time she felt exultation because Charles was alive—and dismay, for she had lost her courage at the last instant and Michael remained unavenged.

Kathleen looked up to see Charles, tall and pale, silhouetted in the doorway. His hat was missing, the quiver empty. Without a word he took her hand and hurried her along the side of the ballroom floor to a hallway and through a door to the rear of the house. He strode across the lawn to an overgrown path, pulling her so she had to run to keep from falling. At last he stopped on a rock ledge high above the river. Noticing she still trembled, he placed his jacket over her shoulders.

He walked a short distance away and stood staring down at the dark river. Overhead the stars seemed closer than she had ever seen them. Storm King Mountain loomed above to their right. For a long time she remained with head bent and arms folded. When at last the trembling subsided she lowered her face into her hands and wept.

Charles came to her holding out a handkerchief which she took and used to wipe away her tears. He touched her lightly on the shoulder, then ran his hand along her arm until he found her hand. For a moment she leaned to him so her hair lightly brushed his cheek. Still holding her hand he turned and began the walk back to the house. He left her in the upper hall with a whispered “Good night.”

The mirror in her bedroom showed Kathleen a pale, tear-smudged face. Her hair was tousled, the tiara lost. With a moan she threw herself on the bed to lie staring at the blank wall until sleep finally came.

A restless sleep was troubled by phantoms she could not recall when she woke in the early dawn. She got up, her body aching. She removed the rumpled gown, and as she hung it in the wardrobe she saw the dress she had worn so confidently on the train from Ohio. After she washed in the basin, Kathleen pulled the gray crinoline over her head. Standing before the mirror she undid the bow to let her hair fall. Her brush snagged time after time before the curls loosened to cascade in gentle waves about her shoulders.

She was no longer the fairy princess of the night before.
I'm plain
, she thought,
Josiah's girl from Ashtabula in the plain gray dress. Good
, she told herself,
I was never meant to be anyone but myself.
Yet she did not really care, she was empty, drained of feeling.
Is this how Mrs. Ehrman feels
, she wondered,
as she waits for her life to end?

I'll find Charles
, she told herself,
and make him tell me the truth about what happened in Kansas, the how and why of my brother's death.
Only three days remained of the eight allotted by Josiah. The deadline no longer mattered to Kathleen. She would return to Gleneden with Josiah, face whatever awaited her there. What difference did it make?

She looked in on Clarissa and found her sitting up in bed. “Last night I could hear the music all the way from here,” the other woman said. “Tell me about the masquerade.” Kathleen described the ballroom, the dancers and their costumes, told of the failure of her plan.

“I couldn't sleep,” Clarissa said. She blushed. “Early this morning I sent one of the maids who's been staying with me to make sure the Captain was all right.”

“I couldn't harm him. Even if he hadn't rescued me I wouldn't have been able to.”

“Rescued you?” Clarissa seemed puzzled. “Oh, yes, at the cabin in the woods.”

Kathleen glanced at the older woman but Clarissa did not meet her eyes. “The Captain did rescue us, didn't he?” Clarissa looked away. “I suspected something of the sort,” Kathleen said. “Tell me the truth: did Josiah arrange the kidnapping?”

Clarissa nodded. “I don't know why Josiah isn't more straightforward. At times he's like a secretive boy playing games.”

“I didn't guess at first,” Kathleen said. “And when I did suspect, I wasn't sure. I thought, or hoped, Josiah would find a way to get us onto the Estate. With no idea of what he might have in mind. Why didn't he tell me? As it was I might have ruined his whole plan.”

“He should have explained, but Josiah loves mysteries. Nothing pleases him more than to appear to be a bumbler until the last minute when he reveals a wonderful solution to all your problems. A man with surprises hidden up his sleeve like a conjuror. In a way I sometimes see him as a magician or a sorcerer.”

“When we were captured my only thought was to escape,” Kathleen said. “I set the fire in the cabin without thinking. I had to do something.”

“If I had been in your place,” Clarissa told her, “I'm afraid I would have waited and hoped. Prayed, no doubt, but waited. I've discovered patience works best for me.”

“Michael always said I flailed about like a newborn colt and as unsuccessfully. I never imagined the fire might trap me. Even when Edward knocked the revolver from my hand I didn't suspect Josiah had planned the whole affair.”

Clarissa smiled when Kathleen mentioned Josiah. A smile of fondness and exasperation, Kathleen thought.

“He hired the two men who kidnapped you in Newburgh,” Clarissa said. “And later a third to watch and make certain the coach was stopped before he rode to report the abduction to the Worthington Estate. Just as he expected—no, just as Josiah knew he would—the Captain galloped to the rescue.”

Josiah again, Kathleen thought as she walked to her room. Even though hundreds of miles away he still made his presence felt.

At the door to her bedroom she changed her mind.
I'll find Charles now
, she decided. She went downstairs to the empty dining room and walked through a hushed hallway to the front porch. Above her head the many windows of the house stared at her with blank faces. On the driveway flies circled over piles of horse dung. One of the wires holding the colored lanterns had broken and several lanterns lay shattered on the ground. The others hung between the trees, their usefulness over.

Kathleen returned to the ballroom. The candles in the chandeliers had guttered out. The floor was strewn with streamers, cigars, and crumpled papers. Several chairs lay overturned. The room seemed contracted, as though it had grown smaller overnight, and Kathleen felt a sense of desolation.

Head down, tired, wanting to sleep yet knowing she could not, Kathleen walked to the entrance hall where she saw Alice Lewis stop momentarily on the curving stair. The two women faced one another.

“I'm looking for Captain Worthington,” Kathleen said.

“He's gone.” The stout maid was abrupt.

“Gone?”

“Yes, he packed his saddlebags early this morning to go into the mountains. Like his father before him. Mr. Jeffrey used to go off alone when he wanted to think things over. I don't know what happened last night, but something surely did.” Her voice became harsh. “And I suspect you know what it was.”

Kathleen lowered her head without replying.

“I'm sorry,” Mrs. Lewis said. “I shouldn't be sharp with you. This heat gets all of us a bit out of sorts.”

“I heard thunder the evening before last. Perhaps we'll have rain.”

“Thunder?” Mrs. Lewis raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I know. Not thunder at all. What you heard was the West Pointers firing their cannon at Target Hill again. Mr. Charles was fit to be tied. This is no weather for target practice what with the woods so dry and so much danger of a forest fire.”

“So there was no thunder.”

“No, and not a trace of rain, either.”

Kathleen began to walk past Mrs. Lewis and up the stairs. “Oh, I forgot,” Kathleen said. “I went to the gypsy camp yesterday. I feel sorry for them, especially the children. The Estate should do something for them after not letting them stay here. Why doesn't Mr. Blasingame at least send some food?”

“The gypsies!” Mrs. Lewis snorted. “You'll only encourage them to keep coming back year after year. They're never satisfied. We have enough strangers here as it is.”

The older woman's opposition roused Kathleen. “Will you tell Mr. Blasingame what I suggested?” she persisted.

Mrs. Lewis hesitated. “All right,” she conceded.

Kathleen, upset by Alice's hostility, climbed the stairs to return to her room, her mind sorting and resorting the events of the last few days. Should she leave the Estate? What possible reason did she have to stay? She had failed Michael. Her failure left an indelible stain on her image of herself, for never before had she not been able to finish what she began.

And yet she wanted to remain if only to discover more about Charles and Josiah, to get to know Clarissa better and, she admitted reluctantly, Edward as well. Not from mere curiosity. Each day her life became more and more interwoven with theirs, and each day the unravelling became more difficult for her to imagine.

A bearded Edward Allen waited for Kathleen in the hall outside her bedroom. She was surprised to find him wide awake so early on Sunday morning.

“You couldn't bring yourself to do it, could you?” he asked in a sympathetic voice.

“No. I suppose I lost my nerve at the last moment,” she admitted.
I have no need for concealment now
, she thought.
More than anything I need a friend, someone to talk to.

“I have a message for you,” he said, taking an envelope from his vest. “From Josiah.”

“Josiah? When did it come?”

Edward shook his head. “He didn't send the letter by post. Before he left he said to give you this if you didn't go through with your plan.”

“So he suspected all along,” she murmured. She tore a narrow curl of paper from one end and removed the single sheet. The message contained one word followed by two numbers. “
John 8:32
,” she read. “What can he…?”

“We need a Bible,” Edward interrupted. “I saw one in the library. Come, we'll soon know what Josiah has to say.” They went down the stairs to the windowless room on the first floor. After Edward lit the lamp she undid the brass clasp to open the Bible which rested on top of a small marble table. The pages rustled as she leafed to the New Testament.

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,” Kathleen read the names of the books. “Chapter eight, the thirty-second verse. What can Josiah mean?”

“
And ye shall know the truth,
”
he read over her shoulder, “
and the truth shall make you free.
” He smiled. “Josiah and his riddles,” he said.

“‘
Know the truth
,'”
she repeated. “Could he be telling me…?” While she stared at the page her thoughts returned to Gleneden, and she saw the light reflected from Josiah's face as he shook the logs in the fireplace.

“Isn't he saying I acted without knowledge? Suggesting I discover the truth of what happened between Charles and my brother Michael?”
Yet how can I?
she wondered.
When will Charles return from the mountains?

Edward frowned. “Many times the truth is best left unrevealed,” he said. “We can only be happy as long as we're allowed our deceptions. Especially our self-deceptions.”

“You can't mean that,” she told him.

His eyes, which had been glazed and inward-seeing, focused on her and narrowed. He shrugged. “I think you wanted a ride to church,” he said.

She placed the red ribbon from the front of the Bible on the page containing
John 8:32.
If Edward wanted to change the subject, she was willing. “Yes, please,” she said. “Let me get my hat.”

The day, Kathleen found as they drove from the Estate in the buggy, was the coolest in weeks. Serried rows of clouds covered the sun. “A mackerel sky,” she said. “We'll have rain in three days' time.”

“I hope you're right.” His tone told her he was skeptical.

The mass comforted her as it always did. The statements, the vestments, the ritual, the sonorous phrasing, the same here in Cornwall as in Ohio, the same now as in her early childhood. To Kathleen, Sunday mornings were islands in a sea of change.

She had attended a Benedictine school. In Cleveland for a year after her mother died. Awed by the learning of the nuns, she dreamed of entering a convent. The wish receded as she grew older, was forgotten for months at a time, only to return when she was reminded of her craving for knowledge. How else, she wondered, could a girl become educated?

After the service she found Edward sitting in the buggy on the road in front. As they passed strolling churchgoers dressed in their Sunday best he smiled at her. Through the open doors of a white-steepled church Kathleen heard the rise and fall of the voices of the congregation.

“Onward Christian soldiers

Marching as to war…”

Many times she had hummed the martial tune after hearing friends singing it. Today, strangely, the words made her ill at ease.