Dark Splendor (28 page)

Silvia had to fetch another chemise from the
bureau, but once the new one was on and she busied herself with the
myriad of buttons on the bodice of her gold gown, there was little
evidence of passion’s fire remaining in the Emerald Suite. The
lovelight, though, continued to burn in Silvia’s eyes as she
watched Roman retie the leather cord that bound his hair. In
Roman’s eyes the savagery had mellowed to a gentle blue.

Catching a glimpse of her tangled hair in
the mirror, Silvia left her gown only half-fastened and hastened
across the room to brush the wildness from her ebony tresses. Roman
came to stand behind her, his gaze reveling in the double view of
radiant beauty presented him as he looked over her shoulder at the
image reflected in the mirror.

Silvia quickly restored her coiffure and
began to fasten the tiny buttons on her gown.

Feeling his blood stir once more, Roman slid
his arms around her and pulled her hands from their work. His
fingers played with tantalizing deftness along the inviting valley
between her breasts.

“This thing between us must be reckoned
with, Silvia, my sweet,” he whispered as his lips nibbled gently at
the soft morsel of her earlobe. “You and I—”

Silvia cringed as a knock sounded at the
door.

“May I come in?” Another light tap at the
door preceded the cool voice.

“Martha.” Roman pulled his hands away and
turned stiffly.

Silvia hurriedly finished the task of
fastening her gown. But not waiting for an answer, Martha swung the
door open and entered.

“Forgive me.” She smiled lamely, her hands
pressed together prayerlike as she stepped into the room. Her eyes
raked coldly over Silvia, then flew in a rigid stare to Roman. Her
face, livid with rage, belied her calm voice. “I’ve searched the
house for you, Roman. Eric sent me to find you.” Martha circled
innocently about the room, stopping once as she spotted Silvia’s
ripped chemise lying on the floor. Fierce spots of color appeared
in her cheeks, but she continued to speak as if the sight had not
affected her. “He is waiting at the stable. You were to accompany
him to the mill, I believe.”

She gave Silvia a look of cold indifference.
“Forgive me for intruding on your privacy,” she said flatly. “I
only meant to ask if you had seen Roman. I did not expect to find
him here.”

Silvia looked imploringly at Roman, but he
had turned away from her, his face searching Martha’s, and in a
moment he took his cousin by the arm and left without a backward
glance. Silvia heard the echoing of Martha’s voice and trilling
laughter as she accompanied Roman down the hall.

The coolness of Martha’s stare seemed to
hover in the emptiness of her room. Silvia sat motionless on her
bed. She felt suspended on a thread in the black hole that waited
to swallow her up. Her mind darted wildly about. What had she done?
The tiny ray of hope held out to her vanished. She had thought
Roman was about to offer her his heart, or perhaps only his
assistance. No matter what, she sorely needed it from him, and
now...now there would be nothing.

Martha’s eyes haunted her, as she picked up
the chemise Roman had torn from her body. She remembered the hurt
reflected in Martha’s pale blue eyes, and she felt a shudder of
humiliation as she put the chemise away. Her actions had been
unforgivable. She had alienated the one person nearest to being a
friend.

And Roman would probably think she had
planned the rendezvous, that she had meant to seduce him. He would
believe that had been her purpose in asking him to her room. He
would think her shameless. Sighing, she sank wearily onto the bed
where only minutes earlier Roman had loved her with a passion that
still lived in her heart.

Her life seemed to dissolve into misery as
she covered her face and sobbed in her hands. Without willing it,
she was doing exactly as Schlange had planned. She wept
uncontrollably, her tears coming in a flood of bitter rivulets that
stung her cheeks and splashed dark spots on her dress.

It was evil, this house. Every word she
spoke, every action she made, was part of a trap. Schlange knew,
and somehow, as if she were a mindless candlemoth, was luring her
nearer and nearer the flame. She shuddered; feeling the heat and
smelling the powdery scorched wings just before the fire consumed
her. She was burning, burning as she was drawn up into Schlange’s
evil ways. Grudgingly her fingers moved to smooth the tears from
her cheeks and brush at the sodden spots on her gown.

Why had she thought she could defy Schlange?
She could not. She had no more defense than the marble statues in
his library. She was becoming what he demanded, an ornament for the
house, a pretty puppet strung to Wilhelm’s wicked hands, moving as
he willed, doing as he demanded. She would bear Schlange’s
grandchild or bear the blood of his son. She sobbed again,
unchecked, and bit her lip until the salty taste of blood filled
her mouth. Perhaps this time the deed was done.

***

“I looked for you in your room,” Martha
remarked as her hand clasped a tortoise comb with a
shell-and-scallop design she carried concealed in her pocket. “I
hope you don’t mind.”

“No,” Roman snapped.

“I do hope Uncle doesn’t learn of this,”
Martha went on, composedly lifting her little chin.

“What?” he asked brusquely. Roman’s jaw was
set in a tight clench. Since he had left Silvia’s bedroom he had
not truly been aware of Martha by his side.

“Why,” she said in amazement, “you are not
the first to visit her bed. I believe both Eric and Morgan have
also fallen victim to her charms.” She sighed innocuously.

Roman turned in surprise. His lips twitched,
then thinned in irritation. “You’re sure of this?” There was an
edge to his voice. Roman clenched his jaw tighter; she had touched
a raw spot.

“Surely you don’t think I would joke about
such a thing.” A quick bright flush appeared on Martha’s cheeks and
there was a tiny flicker of her eyelids as she looked demurely at
Roman. “Willy, I suppose, has not the fortitude to keep a new bride
satisfied.”

Roman shrugged, then strode off alone.
Martha watched him go, a wisp of a smile spread across her
lips.

***

Wilhelm Schlange was in a fine state of fury
when Silvia sat down opposite him in the sitting room. Weeks had
passed and she had failed to deliver the message he wanted to hear.
His high temper brought a deathly pallor to his face and a
wrathful, smoldering light to his eyes.

A trembling, withered hand held a feathered
quill poised above an inkwell. On a small ebony lap desk rested a
leather-bound book much like the one Eric used for daily notations.
Schlange scrawled a few more lines without bothering to look up.
Again he dipped the pen in the jar, his hand shaking violently and
causing him to spatter drops of black India ink on the open
page.

“Blot it. Quickly.” He made a jerky,
agitated attempt to hand the journal to her. The ink trickled
downward from the large splotches forming dark, spidery lines just
below the last entry.

Silvia snatched a piece of blotting paper
from the table and applied it to the spots. As she removed it and
looked down to see that she had not worsened the spatter, she was
amazed to see that her name was the last word he had written. She
had only an instant to make out a few sentences before Wilhelm
reached for the book and she reluctantly returned it to him. But
the glimpse was enough for her to know that he made regular entries
in a journal.

He was staring boldly at her. “An old man’s
memory will not keep pace with his deeds.” His voice was harsh and
bitter. “I have kept a record these last years against the one
stored in my mind.” Grating laughter assailed her ears. “Your story
is here, my dear. What would you not give to have my journal and
prove your case?”

Weakly he nodded to Odin, and the black man
advanced from his post beside the door. Odin now always accompanied
Schlange. As Schlange’s health grew slowly but evidently poorer, he
would not risk being alone.

Silvia had become so accustomed to Odin’s
presence that at times she forgot he was in the room. He stood at
his post soundlessly, remaining tirelessly alert as he waited to do
Schlange’s bidding. Odin seemed always to anticipate the old man’s
needs and to be in motion before Schlange could issue his feeble
summons, and now, silently, Odin took the journal and left the
room.

Silvia’s eyes darted after him. “Is there a
safe?”

Schlange shook with bitter laughter. “There
are many hiding places in this house. None know them but Odin and
myself. Nor will they find them. Nor will you, though I see in your
eyes that you wish to. The journal and the will that passes all I
own to my grandson are hidden where they cannot be found.”

“You have made your bequests in favor of a
child that has not yet been born?”

“I have made it to whom I choose,” he
answered sharply. “Steel yourself for that day, my dear. You will
have no friends in this house when the will is read.” His spirit
sagged, and like a sail with the wind gone out of it, he sank down
in his chair. The corners of his mouth twisted downward, but
whether from pain or anger, she could not tell.

It was a brief lull. A moment later his
voice sounded again, as harsh and cold as before, and he shook his
head grudgingly.

“The reaper would claim me today, my dear,
if I did not will him away. But I am prepared for what I know must
occur.” He looked at her with his sunken, burning eyes. “And you,
my dear, can forget your thoughts of prying the information from
Odin. He would die before he would be disloyal to me.”

Silvia wet her dry lips. Odin’s loyalty she
believed. Eric had told her of how Schlange had rescued him from a
brutal beating years ago and brought him to Schlange Island as his
personal servant. He was more than that now. He was Schlange’s eyes
and ears and sometimes his legs. Odin had protected his master on
many occasions. No. There would be no chance of wresting
information from Odin. But there might be another way of finding
the journal.

She lost her train of thought as queasiness
assailed her stomach. She had been troubled by it for days now.
Fear had hung over her like a shadow, growing darker and larger
each day until at last she had come to accept the cause of her
malady.

A brief flicker of fury raged in her mind.
He would read her secret in her face. Yes. He would make a new
entry in his journey for this day. Schlange, for one, would be
pleased with the news she bore.

He brought her abruptly back to the present
with a noise made between his teeth. It was a gratuitous hiss that
grew to a rumble of laughter from a crack in his mouth.

“Tell me,” he rasped. “I want to hear you
say it.” His color heightened, his sallow skin tinged with a
scarlet flush, his thin chest heaving with excitement and blatant
delight.

What could she say? The child will come in
the spring...you will have your grandson?

She was sure enough of her condition to be
torn in an agonizing conflict between joy for the thought of a
child growing within her and horror for the circumstances under
which it would be brought into the world.

“It is done,” she said quietly. Her cheeks
paled. Parting with her secret was as odious as having a limb torn
from her body.

“Ahhh...my triumph,” he said, breaking into
a coarse laugh. Wilhelm’s pupils were spotted with fire and his
face enlivened with satisfaction. “And the father, my dear?”

“Allow me some degree of privacy,” she
answered, bright spots now dotting her cheeks as well.

He shook with silent laughter. “As you wish,
my dear. It matters little to me, as long as the child carries
Schlange blood.”

“That it does.”

“Then I will content myself with that
knowledge and happily await the arrival of my grandchild.” He gave
her a slanted smile from a pair of white, papery lips. “The
grandson of Wilhelm Schlange will receive a king’s welcome into the
world.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled wickedly at her.
“Keep your secret and concentrate on the joys of motherhood.”

Silvia rose and wandered restlessly about
the room, her back purposely to Wilhelm, not wanting him to see her
face. Eventually she came to rest at the windows and looked out
over sloping ground covered with thick, bearded oaks. In the
distance she could make out the tips of sails in the little harbor,
and beyond them the endless gray-blue of the unsettled ocean.

It was true that she had long looked forward
to the prospect of motherhood, yet now she could not be truly
pleased. The father of her child could never know the child was
his. Nor could she anticipate a warm welcome for Wilhelm’s
grandchild. He would be viewed as a usurper of inheritances, an
unexpected interloper who would rob his relatives of things they
had become accustomed to.

Schlange’s crackling voice intruded on her
reverie.

“See that you are cautious. I want nothing
to happen to my grandchild.” His voice fell to a weak whisper and
the thin lips shook with a faint tremor.

She didn’t turn. The remark warranted no
response, nor apparently was one expected. A brittle silence built
in the room and she felt as if the breath had been snatched out of
her.

Below, she watched the mild stirring of the
treetops and the whimsical fall of their shadows on the ground. The
light breeze was followed by a surprising moment of complete
stillness, and then, like the casting of a net, a dark, swelling
cloud appeared and blocked out the bright sunlight. A wild, rolling
gust of wind accompanied the darkness and shook the trees,
spiraling leaves high in the air before dropping them to the ground
like a dry pelting of rain.