She made her way along the corridor that ran along the back of the house, listening at the doors until she came to the far corner. The door was slightly ajar, and strands of blue-gray smoke sifted out into the gaslight. A murmur of voices and the harsh clicking of chips told her all she wanted to know. She put her hand on the knob, then dropped it suddenly and moved away, through an open curtained door onto the balcony. No. She would not embarrass him that way. Sooner or later, he would have to step out for a breath of fresh air, and she would be waiting.
The balcony was deserted, and she put a hand to one of the square whit posts, leaning heavily against it and staring out across the broad expanse of the lawn. A brief gust of autumn wind made her hug herself with a shudder, and she wished she’d gone to fetch a shawl. Instead, she pressed deeper into the shadows and listened to the music sifting up from below. Slow, now, and very nearly mournful. And as she listened, finding herself humming the melody quietly, her anger subsided, a soft sense of melancholy taking its place.
A faint nose behind her made her drop her hands to grip the smooth railing tightly. There were footsteps, and someone came through the door, stopping, then moving down to her right several paces. She turned her head at the sound of a match struck against the post.
A long dark cigar, gray suit, black waistcoat. The man stared at her over the flame and his grin was satanic.
“Mrs. Roe,” he said softly, “I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to come up here.”
She looked around quickly, hoping someone would interrupt them, but before she could move a hand grabbed her wrist in an iron grip, pulling. She tried to snatch her hand away, but his strength was too great, and she permitted herself then to be guided to the farthest corner.
“I suppose you’ve been wondering about me,” he said sardonically.
“Not at all, Mr. Forrester. I’ve been much too busy to concern myself with the likes of you.”
Forrester chuckled, drew on the cigar and leaned forward, forcing her to back away from the glowing orange tip. “I wish I could believe that,” he said, “but I’m afraid I know you too well. A pity. And a shame, isn’t it, that I had to see you here. One more misery piled upon a heap of others, isn’t that right, Mrs. Roe?”
He pointed down over the railing with the cigar. Despite herself, she followed his gaze and saw Margaret Davidson and Mrs. Nelson standing at the veranda wall, their heads close together. Two men came up behind them and they turned, their faces like gargoyles as they tittered foolishly and allowed themselves to be escorted back into the ballroom.
“They don’t much care for you, do they?” he said, with no sympathy at all.
She would have protested, but did not. It was true. “And they care even less as your husband’s reputation suffers.”
She grimaced unseen as one of her hands reached out to take hold of a post, its corners biting into her fingers and palm. Despite Kevin’s best efforts, despite the parties and the balls, these people—the Davidsons, the Nelsons, the politicians and merchant kings—these people had never really accepted her into their circle. It had been fine as long as the war was on and she had emptied her purse for their interminable charities, but once Appomattox had passed into history and Ford’s Theatre had put Johnson into the White House, their attitudes changed, drastically and suddenly. They had learned, somehow, who she had been. She became, in their minds, only a transplanted farm girl who deserved their snubs. As far as she knew, Kevin had never mentioned to anyone the truth of her origins, and she herself had never said a word, letting them assume she was from some other coastal city like New York or Boston. But once the pattern of calculated insults became clear, she suspected—and hated herself for it—that Kevin had let out the story in a careless drunken moment. Once she had even asked him about it, saying it was no concern of hers but still she was curious, and he had denied it vigorously. And she had believed him. Not that it mattered now. She had more important things to worry about. But it had affected Kevin, sometimes badly. He’d grown angry at his friends for their hypocritical behavior, and lost a goodly number of them; then he’d raged at her, blindly, impotently, for the past over which she had no control.
“What do you want?” she asked flatly.
“Business,” Forrester said.
“I don’t—” She gasped when his grip on her wrist tightened, wanted to cry out when he slowly led her from the railing to the doors. She kicked out suddenly, missed his leg, and he grinned, pushed her down the hall and, in one swift movement, opened a door on the far side of the staircase and shoved her through. The door closed. The room was dark, and she was alone.
“Forrester!” she screamed, spinning about to pound on the paneling, grabbing the knob and twisting it helplessly until she realized it was locked. She turned and put her back to the wall, willing her lungs to slow, to take in the air carefully, while she waited for her eyes to adjust.
Abruptly she realized there was someone else with her; she could hear the labored breathing some distance from her, and was about to call out when a flare of flame blinded her and she threw up a hand to shade her eyes.
“Prompt delivery,” Geoffrey Hawkins said, “is something I always insist upon.”
He was standing in the center of the floor, a large bed at his back, a lantern on a small night table burning dimly. There was no need to ask what he wanted; she could see it in his eye, the way his tongue moved over his lips. She put a hand to her breast to calm herself, could not, and sidled away from the door toward a sideboard. He took a step toward her and she lunged for the decanter and glasses, snatched up the former and flung it hard at him, not waiting to see if she’d struck him but grabbing one of the glasses and racing to the next wall. She turned, and saw him down on one knee with a hand pressed to his stomach, the crystal shattered at his feet and the port slowly staining the oriental carpeting. She threw the glass at his head, missed, raced for the lantern and had her right hand around it when she was struck from behind.
There was darkness, then, a red tinge and burning. She was on her hands and knees, the back of her skull feeling as if it had tripled in size. Tears exploded unbidden from her eyes as she shook her head to clear it, her hands twisting into claws when fingers gripped her shoulder and forced her to stand. She whirled, raking, heard Geoffrey’s guttural scream before his fist slammed into her cheek and she fell backward onto the mattress.
She stiffened, her eyes widening in horror—not at the trembling hook that threatened her throat, but at Geoffrey’s face—or what had been his face before her nails had gouged it. There was a thin line of blood from the center of his forehead to the tip of his nose, thin and broadening, another on his cheek. And the patch—the patch had been torn aside to reveal a socket plugged with a sphere of milky white glass, the flesh around it hardened in permanent gray scar tissue threaded with faint shadows of crimson and black. Like some hideous vampiric vortex it drained all humanity from his expression, all vestige of sanity, all fringes of mercy. He laughed and leaned closer, and in her terror she could not turn her gaze from the mask of evil that loomed over her. Her lips moved silently, her head turned slowly from side to side, yet she still could not tear her gaze away from the blood, the laughter; and the eye.
He’s going to kill me, she thought suddenly. Kevin is down the hail gambling away all we own, and this man is going to kill me.
The hook flashed, making her blink, and the strands of her pearls separated, fell away from her throat and left her feeling inordinately naked. She moved a hand to cover her throat and the hook flashed again. The hand dropped away quickly.
“You will undress,” he said then, backing away slowly.
She dared not disobey him, praying futilely that this would only be a repetition of the winter before when he had stripped her naked and done nothing but stare. She pushed off the bed and rose, her hands awkwardly unfastening the stays, the bone, catching the dress as it fell from her shoulders with an accusing hiss, letting the material drop when he warned her with a glare. It will be as before, she thought, in an effort to keep from losing her mind; as before, it will be, it must be … and she was standing by the mattress, naked, her hands stiff at her sides as he nodded, and his good hand moved to his belt.
“No!” she shouted suddenly, moving like an unleashed spring. She stopped when the hook tore into the bedpost, the arm blocking her. “My God, Geoffrey!” She tried to climb over the bed, fell when the hardened metal glanced off the back of her head, bringing bile to her mouth and a sob to her lips. Weakly, she tried to raise herself on hands and knees, but was shoved over onto her back. Another blow, and she was sure this time her skull would crack. She opened her mouth to cry out again, and gagged when a piece of cloth was rammed between her teeth. She nearly vomited. She blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to drive back the pinwheels of heated color flashing before her, her arms out to keep Geoffrey back as he climbed onto her legs and pinioned them to the covers. She lashed out weakly, sobbing wildly now and bucking to throw him off.
Worst of all: he said nothing. His good arm held her down at the neck, the other easily slapping aside her panic-stricken blows.
He entered her and her scream was muffled, though her eyes widened painfully. His arm slipped slightly and for a moment she thought she would be strangled, far better than the pummeling between her legs, the cold heat that scorched her while he rode her as he would an unbroken mare.
Yet she might have been able to bear it, might have been able to close her mind against the violation if it hadn’t been for Geoffrey’s face—it had no expression, none at all: no hatred, no satisfaction, not even contempt. Nothing. It was as though the time of day, a flea on a dog’s back, the amount of gin in the bottom of a broken glass was far more important, and infinitely more interesting. It was as though she did not exist. And when it was done, he dressed and left without a single glance in her direction.
She had no idea how long she lay there, sobbing, forcing herself to keep her hands away from her stomach, her thighs, to touch and ease the pain both without and within. Finally, however, she tore the gag from her mouth and rose, slipped into her clothes and moved to the door. She was numb. Her mind refused to dwell on the incident, skittering away like a frightened horse at a falling leaf. She composed herself, and stepped into the hallway—a part of her noting that the door had now been unlocked—and found Kevin pacing anxiously at the foot of the staircase.
“Darling,” he said, running up to meet her, “where have—”
“I want to go home,” she said flatly. “I have a headache, and I’ve been resting. Take me home, Kevin. Now.”
Kevin smiled weakly, took her arm and brought her to the doorway where he spoke in low tones to a liveried servant. Then he turned to her. “The carriage,” he explained. “While we’re waiting, don’t you think we should pay our respects to Mrs.—”
“Now,” she said, only faintly wondering why he was so amenable to their leaving so abruptly. And when a servant had adjusted her crimson pelisse over her shoulders, she was out the door before her husband could say a word.
“Cass,” he said later, as they were racing eastward, “Cass, I—”
“Did you lose much?” she asked, suddenly needing a target. “Did they—what is the new term, Kevin? Take your worth? Well, did they?”
When he refused to answer, she did not pursue it. It was only one more pain to be added to the rest. One more pain. My God, she thought, how can I tell him?
“I suppose the next thing you’ll say is that you’re keeping me instead of the other way around,” he said sullenly, a few minutes later.
“It never crossed my mind,” she said coldly.
“A damned good thing.”
“Even if it is true.”
He grabbed her arm, his fingers squeezing her so tightly she nearly gasped in pain. “Wrong, my dear. Remember, we are married. What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine.”
It was well past midnight when they entered Jordan Lane, and not long after that before they were in bed, silent, cold, as she fought with herself to tell him what had happened, what had been happening since the day they’d first met. But how much of it would he believe, especially in his present state? She knew of the gambling, the losses, and knew with a certainty beyond speculation that Forrester had been at the ball solely to drive Kevin further into debt, as he had been doing for months. She stared into the darkness, cursing her foolishness for not telling Kevin the whole story right from the start. You’re a damned stupid fool, Cass Bowsmith, she told herself—and gasped. Cass Bowsmith. Cass … Roe! Roe! Damn it, you’re a married woman!
But for the first time a faint, insidious suspicion insinuated itself into her dozing: suppose, Cassandra Bowsmith Roe, Kevin really didn’t love you at all, was attracted to you only after your wealth matched and surpassed his? Suppose, Cassandra. Suppose.
Chapter Sixteen
“U
tter nonsense,” Kevin growled as he strode for the door. “Cass, I don’t know what’s come over you, but you’re not thinking straight.”
It was difficult to suppress the urge to grab something and throw it at him. She wanted to shout, but had done enough of that already; she wanted to cry, but it would only serve to fix his idea of her condition more firmly. The best she could do, under the circumstances, was follow him and plant herself in front of the door while he picked up his scarf, gloves, and walking stick after jamming his hat angrily on his head.
“It is not nonsense,” she said as calmly as she could. “How many times do I have to tell you about that letter?”
“I would still like to see it.”
“And I told you I burned it, damn it! I would not have it under my roof!”
Kevin shook his head and placed his hands gently on her shoulders. “Cass, you’ve been under a strain, I know. The way those people—supposedly my friends—have treated you, the way they all treat you, it’s small wonder you think someone’s out to get you.”