Legacy (2 page)

His note, though, arrived before I went home. One December noon I had collected my mail before going into the dormitory dining room for lunch, when the matron held up before me an envelope bearing the shield of Harvard College. 'This came for you, too,' she said, her plump face set in a stern expression. 'A young man brought it by the school this morning. Said he was a relative of yours. As you know, our regulations prohibit your seeing anyone but a relative while you are in our charge.'

As she held the envelope, I could see where atop the Harvard insignia had been printed plainly: STEVEN RAWLINGS. Steven! Hoping that I did not show any surprise, I explained casually that my cousin Steven was taking a degree at Harvard and that he was likely dropping me a note to see if I wanted to share transportation expenses on the trip home for vacation.

She studied the name on the envelope for a moment or two and then handed it over. 'Be so good as to tell me if there's any reply,' she said. 'And if you change any of the arrangements your father has already made, be certain to let me know so that I can advise him.'

And with a look that made me feel like a criminal trying to escape from prison, she dismissed me.

The note said:

“
Will call upon you this afternoon at four, if I may. My back has healed quite well.

Steven”

It was fortunate he had not said more, I thought, looking at the envelope. Plainly, the letter had been steamed open and then resealed.

When he called, dressed in elegant tweeds, he stayed only a short time. Under the watchful eye of the chaperone in the reception lounge, he asked what train I would be taking back to Grampian, and when I told him the train and the compartment number, he put on a disappointed look. 'Ah, well, I'm afraid I'll have to be back sooner than that. Promised 'em faithfully. But don't fret, I'll give the folks your regards and tell 'em you're still alive. Don't study too hard till they let you out.'

He met me at my compartment on the train a week later. That day I found out that he had known who I was even before I had met him, for he had seen me with my father in town in Grampian.

I found out also that I was in love with him, for when he took me in his arms and kissed me again, the way he had kissed me on Legacy, I did not protest - not even though he had told me that his father had been the one who had whipped him that summer morning, and that his father's name was Brad Graybar.

Of course, I could not see Steven again while we were in Grampian. But we did manage to meet that spring, coming home for Easter. Also, for a short while that summer, until our family sailed for Europe, we met sometimes on Legacy, where there was no one to see us.

By the end of the following school year we had become lovers. It was not terribly difficult, even though I was still in the same school and under the same stern regulations. By then I was seventeen, and, like the other senior girls, I knew who on the staff needed money in exchange for looking the other way on the particular nights when they were on duty. We thought it was a great lark to smuggle a young man to our rooms without the matron being the wiser.

The first time there was a little pain. But after that it was only a delicious wildness that left me feeling full, glowing inside.

That summer Mother and I were in Europe again. And in the fall I was in college, along the Hudson River, and Steven, having graduated from Harvard, was in Grampian working for his father. During the next four years we saw each other rarely, only on those occasions when he had some excuse to travel to New York on business. Those times we did share were best when I could go into the city with Lisa, a school friend who lived there, for a weekend visit with her parents. That would give us a free afternoon Saturday for 'shopping,' and while Lisa shopped for both of us, Steven and I would make slow, wonderful love in his room at the Astor, where again money had ensured that none of the staff would ask any embarrassing questions.

I lived for those times, though I was busy with my studies and with the usual round of supervised callers and dances that were part of the college's social life. Many nights I lay awake wondering when next I would see him again. Many other nights, as my time came around each month, I worried about the consequences of our lovemaking and wondered whether I would soon be sent home in disgrace. But that never happened. Whether it was because of precautions on Steven's part or simply by chance, I did not know.

Naturally, I never gave myself to another man. Though I had many suitors, many very attractive, I did not take any of them seriously. I was saving myself for Steven.

And yet, as my college years began to come to an end, a change came over our relationship. It began one Saturday in October when Steven told me of the great stone castle his father was building for himself on Legacy, just in the centre of the clearing where the two of us had first met. Steven spoke of it lightly, the way he always did on those rare occasions when either of us mentioned our parents. My father remained Brad Graybar's outspoken enemy, and his hatred, from what I could gather from Steven, was returned in kind.

Steven described the plans for the building, quite ornate, and then he said, 'I suppose you'll want to marry me just so you can be mistress of the place someday when Brad gets tired of it.'

His flippant tone stung something inside me and I flared back. 'You'd be wiser to marry me. Then my father might let you set foot on Legacy someday, provided I ask him to.'

The intensity of my reply surprised him. It even surprised me. But there it was. Even though five years had gone by and I was a child no longer, I still clung to the belief that one day Legacy would belong to our family again.

He glossed over it, but that afternoon was the beginning of the end for the idyllic love Steven and I had shared, the end of the time when the two of us, young and clever, could laugh at the rest of the world, with its poor, misguided foolish wrangling. Oh, we kept up the pretense that day, together in the soft double bed of his hotel room, where the roar of the New York City trains and the endless carriage traffic filtered through the shuttered window only dimly. But even as I shook with ecstasy in his arms, at the back of my mind I knew that when I returned home things could never be the same. He was Steven Graybar, and I was Catherine Rawlings, and once we were both back in Grampian there would be no convenient way around that fact.

I cried that night, silently, so as not to awaken Lisa or her family. And when the day finally arrived for me to graduate under the proud gaze of my parents, the tears I wept were not all tears of happiness.

And then it was back to Grampian, where within a few weeks the world my parents had so carefully prepared for me, and that other world, the one I had built for myself so happily with Steven, were to collide and change my life forever.

PART ONE

Grampian

Chapter One

May 1875

When I heard a cry coming through the dark pines from somewhere to my right, I had already slowed my horse to a walk. I had been about to swallow my pride and wait for Steven Graybar to catch up with me, for riding here on the unfamiliar north side of Legacy had confused my sense of direction.

The voice came again, still from too far away to distinguish the words, although I could plainly hear the anguish in the tone. Was it Steven's voice? No, definitely not. I was certain I had never heard a cry like this before.

I reined in my horse, stopped, and listened. The cry seemed to come again, fainter this time, a moaning mixed with the wind in the pine boughs above me. Was it my imagination, or did the voice cry out 'No'? I brushed a few wisps of my auburn hair back away from my eyes and tried to see what was over that way. But all I could see was the dark gloom of a pine forest, the great trunks with their dead lower branches, the green boughs high overhead that blocked out the sun, and the sweet-smelling dark carpet of brown pine needles that covered the forest floor and gave it an eerie stillness.

Should I go and see what the trouble was? I hesitated. It was late afternoon, and I really ought to have been on my way back some time ago. Unless I returned home soon, I would have to explain why I had stayed so long at the Saturday afternoon riding lesson that was to be the usual thing for me now that I had finished school. And if Father had the least notion that my story required checking, he would soon find out that I had missed my lesson and had instead gone riding with Steven Graybar.

I could not face the thought of that battle now. Even though I knew it would have to come sooner or later, I wanted to keep Father from learning about Steven for as long as I could.

Father and I had fought enough as it was during the past week. Ever since I had been home we had quarreled about his plans for me. He wanted to have me marry someone, of course - some wealthy prospect whose capital would fit in with Father's business empire. And, naturally, I refused to listen to his talk of a 'practical' marriage.

'I'll choose my own husband when I'm ready for one,' I had said, 'and not before!'

'You'll do as you're told!'

He glared at me, but I would not be intimidated. If he was a fighter, so was I.

'You'll not tell me to sit around idle here in Grampian for single rich men to look at! I'm not going to! You've not brought me up as some ... display creature, and I'm not about to begin now. If I'm going to stay here, I want to work!'

Yet Father refused to let me have anything to do with his business affairs, just as I refused to discuss any suitors. Even though there were hundreds of things I could have done to help, even though I had worked on his account books before, during summers home from school, and even though I had been the only woman in my class at college to receive top honors in a business course, Father still turned a deaf ear. All week long we had been in an angry stalemate. Neither of us would give in.

But I could not give in. If Steven thought that I was seeing someone else, even to please my father ... it was impossible! Only this afternoon Steven had tried to force me to tell Father that we were engaged, and I had ridden off in tears. . .

I did not want to think about that. I shook my head, trying to clear my mind. I was here on the north slope of Legacy, with no one in sight. Steven had not caught up with me. After the quarrel we had just had, he might very well have decided to let me ride off and spend the rest of the afternoon alone.

The moaning up ahead had grown fainter. Perhaps someone had been hurt. I peered in the direction where the sound had come from. Was I mistaken, or were the woods less shadowy over there?

I turned my horse that way and went forward at a walk between the quiet, tall trees. Soon I had reached the crest of the mountain. Up ahead I could see a thick row of blue spruce, and above them I could see the bright afternoon sky. Beyond that row of spruce trees there was a wide clearing.

The stone mansion! There was only one clearing on Legacy. . .the clearing I had known since I was a little girl. And that was the land where Brad Graybar had built his mansion last year.

I had never seen it, of course, but Steven had told me about the huge stone building that the people in town called 'Graybar’s Castle'. Inside, the mansion was said to be even more extravagant than the homes on 'millionaires' row' in Grampian. Brad had bought old-world oil paintings by the square foot, they said, and stained glass and sculptures by the hundredweight. Woodcarvers had worked for months on the ornamentation alone. After out-spending everyone, Brad now could look down on the rooftops of the other millionaires' mansions along the river, as though they were so many little insects far below him. And even though I could scoff at such a transparent attempt to buy status, it was hard not to be fascinated by what Brad had done. Twice since I had been back in Grampian I had climbed the flights of stairs to our fourth-floor cupola and looked out, trying to see the outlines of the 'castle' at the top of Legacy. But I had not been able to find it among the trees.

My pulse quickened as I dismounted and walked ahead of my horse between the last of the tall pines. The castle had to be behind the wall of spruce, even though I could not see it.