Joan Smith (20 page)

Was it really three of the morning when you got to bed last night? That means we spent three hours together. Where did the time go? It is all one glorious golden mist in my memory. Did I imagine you saying you loved me to distraction? Did I have the wits to tell you I feel the same? I do, my darling.

From the first moment I looked across the room and saw your pretty, prissy little face, with your flashing eyes trying not to look at me, I felt my fate was sealed. And what a pretty fate it is. My only regret is that we must meet in secret. Or do I regret it? It will be something to tell our children. Make that our grown children. We would not want to lead innocent youngsters astray, for they will always go a pace beyond the bounds set by their parents. I wonder the world has no account of Bluebeard’s children, and Casanova’s, and Don Juan’s.

I felt a stab of regret to know they had not even enjoyed that one blink of married bliss. Raventhorpe never had awakened with his young bride by his side, and they had left no children for posterity.

The stack of letters was growing thin. Raventhorpe mentioned disliking to drag Arabella out in inclement weather to meet by the weir. It was fast approaching the time when they had argued about it, and Raventhorpe had dashed off to London. I knew it was frustration and concern for her safety as much as dislike of the cold that made him impatient. Things might have turned out quite differently if they had gone on meeting, and he had seduced her. The temptation must have been strong, and I admired Raventhorpe’s control in acting the gentleman.

He did not write after their row, when he went to London to wait out the winter. There was only one more letter. If it did not deal with their meeting at Chêne Mow to elope, then I had nothing in writing to substantiate what had happened.

I opened the last letter and read the familiar words:

My own dear Belle:

This is intolerable! Your uncle would not accept an apology. It is clear he wants to kill me by fair means or foul. As to forcing you to marry William! I shall meet you at midnight tonight at Chêne Mow, as you suggest, and take you—and all your new finery—to Oldstead to stay for the nonce. But pray do not ask me to cry craven on the duel. I, and in some collateral way you, would carry the shame of cowardice with us until death. Neither pride nor common sense recommends that course to me. I shall not let Throckley make a William of me.

I shall meet your uncle, but I shall not kill him. A wound, high on the shoulder, will teach him a lesson without putting him in his grave. Almquist is awake on all suits. He will see there is no trickery in the affair. I would give a year of my life to avoid this duel. That is one disgrace I have managed to avoid until now. Outside of war or some chance heroic deed, there is no honor in killing or being killed. We shall meet at Chêne Mow at midnight, and soon we shall be together for good. Don’t, I beg of you, do anything foolish, like confronting Sir Giles on your own. All our future happiness depends on your discretion. All my love, always.

Toujours,
Alexander.

The words were exactly as I had written.

I read the letter twice and set it aside. It certainly gave a clear idea of Sir Giles’s intentions. Raventhorpe had said in so many words that Sir Giles was forcing Arabella to marry William. That would explode the theory that she loved William, and Raventhorpe had been blind with jealousy. It also said that Sir Giles meant to kill him. But it was not Raventhorpe who had been killed. It was Arabella. Still, this letter and Arabella’s corpse with a bullet in it would certainly go a long way toward exonerating Raventhorpe.

One reading was not enough. I turned to the first billet-doux and read them all through again, envying Arabella her dashing lover. When he addressed her as his dearest Belle, I felt he was writing to me, and my heart swelled with joy. No wonder she roamed the meadow, grieving her loss. Who would not howl in rage at such an injustice?

Wrapped up in the letters, I did not notice at first that the room had grown warm. When I glanced up, I saw he had come back. A charge of adrenaline surged through me, setting my heart racing.

He looked at me with sad, dark eyes.

“You look lovely tonight, Belle,” he said softly. I touched my hands to my hair in a self-conscious, preening gesture. “Did you wear a skirt because I asked you to?”

“It seemed appropriate,” I said evasively.

His smile stretched to a grin. “After all we have been to one another, you still won’t admit you dressed like this to please me.”

I blushed in pleasure, to hear I meant so much to him. “I have been reading your letters.”

“So I see. I daresay they sound like the gushings of a schoolboy. I was very young when I wrote that treacle, and very much in love.”

“They sound fine, even after all these years. Why have you stayed away so long?”

“Was it so long?” he asked, surprised. “There is no accounting for time here. You blink, and miss a generation or two. I remember ladies wearing decent long gowns, then I awoke one morning and they had all chopped off their hair and were exposing their knees and dancing like beheaded chickens. There was a war in the interim, I think,” he said vaguely. “Yes, there must have been a war, for I remember being in a trench with mud to my knees. It was almost a relief when the bullet came, though I was only nineteen, with another life ahead of me. We won the war? Did we?”

The chopped hair and the dance, the Charleston apparently, told me he meant World War I. “Yes, and the next.”

“Another war?” He shook his head. “Will we never learn?”

“Are you saying you were reincarnated? Your spirit has inhabited various bodies?”

“I suppose that is what happens. The blank spaces, perhaps, are when we are free of mortal cages. I am really not very clear on the details. We are told nothing. It is
chacun pour soi
here.”

“Have you never encountered Arabella in all the years since your death?”

“No, I have not seen her.”

“You might have made the effort to look," I chided.

“Good God,” he said angrily, “do you think I haven’t looked the world over for her? You’ve no idea the herd of human remnants wandering about here. She is avoiding me; that much is clear.”

“No, she is not,” I said calmly but firmly. “I am sure she is looking for you. Perhaps you are incarnated at different times.”

“Why do you say she is looking for me?” he asked. A glint of hope lit his dark eyes.

“She is looking for you. Trust me.”

“Trust
you?”
he said, anger flaring suddenly. “I’d as soon trust a fox with a chicken.”

“I am trying to help you,” I said curtly. I wanted to ask why he was angry; but there were more important things to discover, and he might vanish at any time. I said, “Do you know where they buried Arabella?”

“Surely her grave is in the local churchyard, is it not?” He assumed an expression of ennui, but it did not conceal the bitterness of his tone. “Try the Throckley mausoleum. That is where Mrs. William Throckley’s mortal remains would be resting.”

“She didn’t marry William. Actually, they never found her body!”

He stared, as if I were mad. “What do you mean?”

“She never married William. Raventhorpe, did you not know?”

“I—she didn’t marry him? Are you sure? I know she sent me off, after begging me to rescue her. But are you saying—what
are
you saying, Belle?” He gazed at me with such fierce intensity that I was almost frightened. His whole body glimmered more brightly. “What did they do to her?”

“Sir Giles murdered her that same night she sent you away from Chêne Mow. She only sent you off to save your life. They meant to shoot you, too.” I gave him a brief account of what I had written, and believed to be true. As I related the tragic tale, he listened as one in a trance. A film of moisture pooled in his eyes, but tears did not fall. He sat like a statue until I had finished, then he spoke.

“Oh God!” It was a howl of outrage. “All these years I have cursed and hated that woman, and myself for loving her in spite of all. And now you tell me this, that she gave her life for me. If I had only known, we might have contrived to be together ere now. I
should
have known. I
did
suspect some chicanery, but she told me to my face she loved William. I thought she had been making a game of me, paying me back for going to London that winter. I only went to keep from harming her. She was such an innocent; she had no notion how she inflamed me. But you mean Throckley got away with it? He was never brought to justice?”

“Everyone thinks
you
killed her, Raventhorpe.”

He stared as if he couldn’t understand. “I? Why would I kill the woman I loved dearer than life itself? I left England, which I loved second only to Belle, to avoid hurting her. I could not trust my temper. We Raventhorpes are cursed with a hot temper, you must know. It was a strong temptation to put a bullet through William’s spleen. I wanted an ocean between us, to prevent killing him, for her sake.”

“Did no one write to tell you of her death?”

“My only contacts in England were my publisher, my man of business, and Mama. Neither Murray nor Jenkins knew anything about Belle, and Mama’s letters were infrequent. I did think it odd she urged me to remain abroad. She didn’t tell me what had happened to Belle. I cannot believe she thought I killed her. Mama knew I loved her. She knew I meant to bring her to Oldstead and marry her. I went back to Oldstead that night, to make preparations to leave the country. I told her Belle had jilted me, and the reason. When Belle’s death was reported, she feared I would come back and kill William or Sir Giles, or both. That is why she kept it a secret from me. She knew her son well.”

“And you don’t know where Belle is buried?”

He just shook his head. “I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of looking for her grave, much as I wanted to see it. I only know I wasted that life, frittered it away in idleness and dissipation, trying to forget. I cursed her inconstancy, and used it as an excuse to avoid any serious writing. What did it matter? There was no honor, no justice, no common sense in the world, so I wrote driveling nonsense of what I had seen and done, and became a byword for lechery. Vanejul, when I might have been remembered as Raventhorpe, the poet.”

“You are remembered,” I said sadly, though in truth he was remembered as Vanejul.

“I am best forgotten. But it is mere childishness to blame my behavior on Belle. Every man is responsible for his own life. That, at least, is made painfully clear to us here. Rationalizations have no currency in the afterlife.” He glanced and saw Professor Thumm’s book on the end of the table. “That is about me?” he asked, interested in spite of himself.

“Yes, would you like to see it?”

“No, thank you. I have a notion what it will say. A minor poet in the satirical vein, a clever turn of phrase that appeals to the immature of all ages, but lacking the depth of true genius. What really bothers me, you know, is that I would like to have immortalized my Belle as she deserved, as Dante immortalized Beatrice, and Petrarch did Laura. But at best we were Romeo and Juliet. I never did think that one of Shakespeare’s better plays, though anything by him is better than almost anything by any other playwright. I hoped I might meet him, but no doubt he has found eternal rest. This wandering from body to body is a punishment for us unworthy souls, you know.”

He looked at me with his dark, sorrowful eyes, and tried to smile. “Live the good life, Belle. Do what fate intended you to do, or you will pay a horrific price. The eternal wanderer, in search of redemption.”

“I don’t know what I am meant to do.”

“You will know, one day. I feel a strange peace coming on me, now that you have told me about Belle. Perhaps it was my hatred that kept me from finding eternal peace. Now that I understand, and have forgiven her, I feel the anger ebb. Would it not be strange if it was my own intransigence that has kept me wandering through time, and not my wicked past? We really know so little about the workings of the infinite power."

“Perhaps it was my job to help you,” I said. “The thing I was to do on earth.”

“There will be business of your own to tend to as well, though perhaps my salvation was a part of it.” I watched in frustration as he began to fade. “If you have brought us together, that is no mean accomplishment.” His voice was fading, too, becoming a whisper. I was not even sure if I heard him right, but I liked to think that was what he said, that I had brought them together.

I felt a light breeze on my lips, a phantom kiss and a whispered “Thank you, my dear Belle.”

Then he was gone, and I sat on alone for a long time, rereading the letters and wishing they had been written to me. It was much later when I went up to bed.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I
fell at once into a profound sleep. It was much later in the night when I was awakened by the touch of love. Whether it was real or a dream of unparalleled clarity, I did not know then, nor can I say with absolute certainty to this day, but I do not think it was a dream. In any case, I was with Raventhorpe once more. He was there, folding me in his warmth, nuzzling my throat with his warm lips, moving his fingers luxuriantly through my hair, and calling me his own darling Belle. It was what I had wanted from the first time I met him—longer. I had wanted him before ever I saw his face, or knew his lineaments. He was the ideal born in the bone and sought throughout life.

I sensed in him an answer to the bottomless mystery of all my life. He was my other half, the unlived portion of my heart and soul, which held a promise of fulfillment. All the reckless daring I lacked would come from him, bringing unimagined splendor to my dull existence. He had been so near from the beginning, an innate desire that hovered always at the edge of consciousness, the “do I dare?” of my life. The shadow of my days, and the illumination of my nights, the answer sought but never found, the yearning desire never fulfilled.

I wanted to be Arabella, and he wanted so much to reclaim her that he believed I was. One atom of her was enough to inflame his passion.