The Light in the Darkness (23 page)

At last, she was voluntarily sharing her emotions with him.

The music went on, intimate as a caress, falling delicately on the ears of the one rapt listener. Something in the pathos of the music struck an answering chord deep within him. It expressed his loneliness and sorrow so plainly that he could not move, could do nothing but sit and listen, entranced.

Then, slowly, it changed. The tragedy of the melody slowly metamorphosed into a major key, the tempo accelerated until Jennifer’s fingers were leaping across the keyboard like deer across a meadow. It concluded with a series of gloriously joyful chords.

And then there was silence. Jennifer did not turn to look at him, only stared in dumb misery at the keyboard, feeling that all the effort she had poured into the composition of her piece had been wasted. Grey no doubt felt only contempt for the gift on which she had worked so long and so hard. She heard nothing from the settee. Most likely, she thought wretchedly, he was asleep.

And then a hand came down gently on her shoulder. Looking up in surprise, Jennifer saw her husband, and sudden hope lit within her at the sight of his warm expression.

“I apologize for what I said earlier,” Grey said simply, staring down into her face as though he had never seen it before. In her music he had caught a glimpse of her soul, and he was surprised to realize what he had not known before, that the beauty of her face came not from the regularity of her features, but from what was inside her. Whatever it was that had created that music. “That was the loveliest gift anyone has ever given me.”

Overwhelmed and astonished that her music had wrought such a dramatic alteration in his behavior, Jennifer gave him a brilliant, spontaneous smile. “You liked it?”

“Jennifer, it was—” Grey searched futilely for words vivid enough to express the inexpressible. He knelt beside her and looked up into her face with something akin to
reverence. “I did not know you were capable of creating such a lovely thing,” he told her honestly. “More and more I wonder at my own stupidity at failing to see how extraordinary you are now and before, when first we met.”

Made uncomfortable by the reference to the awkward circumstances surrounding their wedding, Jennifer adroitly changed the subject by handing him a piece of parchment. On it were a profusion of notes.

“I wrote it out,” she explained in response to his puzzled expression, “in case you couldn’t remember it all.” Honesty compelled her to add, “Actually, Catherine helped me write it out, but I composed it.” There was evident pride in her voice.

Grey took the parchment from her as carefully as if it were a treasure and smiled up at her gently. “It was wonderful. The first part—it sounded like I feel, all too often. Alone and angry.”

“I was thinking of you when I first played it,” she admitted. “And the second part, the happy part, I wrote for you as well. I hope—I hope that someday you can be happy, Grey.”

Her genuine hope for his happiness, after all he had done to mire her in the same misery in which he was trapped, touched him deeply. Almost without volition, he raised a hand to her face, gently curving it against her cheek, and kissed her. He had intended it to be a brief kiss of thanks, to express how much her gift had meant to him, but the moment her soft lips touched his, a violent shock of ecstasy and overwhelming desire jolted through him and he knew he could not kiss her chastely. His hand curved around the nape of her neck, pulling her head down, and he kissed her urgently, demanding a response.

To his surprise, she gave him one. Her lips parted and she kissed him warmly. She was as warm and passionate as her music, he thought. His fingers entwined in the thick hair at the nape of her neck, asking for more, and she gave it to him without reservation. Despite her degrading and painful first experience with sex, despite the fact that he
had fully expected her to slap him and run from the chamber in fear and loathing, she only wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss as passionately as he gave it.

Fighting the urge to pull her from her chair onto the carpet, Grey pulled away. For an instant her eyes looked into his with disappointment, then she dropped her gaze. Grey’s silver eyes did not leave her face as he stared at her in bewilderment.

“Jennifer,” he said at last, softly, “you are in love with me. Aren’t you?”

First her music, and then her shameless response to his kiss, had betrayed her. He knew how she felt. Jennifer nodded shakily, feeling her cheeks stain a bright red. “Yes. I am.”

“Unbelievable,” Grey said gently. It was tragic, he thought, that such a young and beautiful woman should be in love with a man such as himself, dissolute and far older than he should be. “After all I’ve done to you, and knowing as you must that I can never love you in return, it’s difficult to believe that you could love me.” He paused and then went on slowly, “That must be true love.”

Jennifer’s eyes met his for an instant and she smiled sorrowfully.

“No, Grey,” she told him. “It’s stupidity.”

And before he could stop her his wife ran swiftly from the room.

I
t was Jennifer’s first rout, and she was acutely nervous despite the fact that it was being held in the familiar surroundings of Greyhaven. Although Greyhaven seemed more familiar to her now, almost like home, she sometimes found herself staring in awe at the grandeur around her exactly as she had the first time she had walked into the parlor. Despite the spacious chambers, the shining silver candlesticks, the magnificent Oriental rugs, she was slowly beginning to believe that someday she might fit into these surroundings.

It helped that she was clad in a ball gown more glorious than any gown she had ever imagined. She and Catherine had sewn their gowns together, with help from the house slaves, and Jennifer was delighted with the result. Her gown was of a forest green satin, the exact color of her eyes, shot through with gold threads, and its stomacher was covered with the small bows known as
echelles.
The skirt parted in the front to reveal a ruffled gold petticoat, and the elbow-length sleeves terminated in cascades of golden lace. The gown was so low-cut that Jennifer had at first objected, wanting to mask her exposed cleavage with a filmy handkerchief, but Catherine had overruled her protests.

Catherine’s gown was nearly as revealing. It was of gray satin, but not a spinsterish gray such as Catherine all too often wore. It shimmered and glowed in the light, clinging to her torso and then billowing out over her side hoops.
Her petticoat was a lighter silvery gray. With her hair piled in an elaborate style on top of her head, pomaded, and powdered with white rice flour, and wearing white lead powder and rouge on her face, she looked surprisingly attractive.

Catherine had refused to powder Jennifer’s hair, and had only lightly applied the white powder to her face. “Your complexion is too beautiful to cover,” she explained as Jennifer surveyed herself in the looking glass. “Most women have to wear a great deal of the powder, or even wax, to conceal pockmarks and the like. You don’t. And your hair is far too striking a shade to powder.”

Jennifer looked at her doubtfully. “Won’t I seem odd if I don’t powder my hair for a rout?”

Her sister-in-law smiled mysteriously. “Don’t think of it as being odd. Think of it as setting a fashion.”

The real reason, of course, that she did not want to powder Jennifer’s hair was because she knew Grey liked its color. Grey had never cared overmuch for hair powder and wigs anyway. But she could hardly tell Jennifer that. She would have left Jennifer’s hair down, falling in a heavy golden cascade to her waist, if she had dared, but that would have been entirely too peculiar. Instead, she had arranged Jennifer’s hair atop her head, combing it over horsehair pads in order to create a fashionably high-piled coiffure, and leaving a few wisps to curl winsomely in front of her ears.

Jennifer was still considering her hair in the looking glass. Her expression was vaguely mutinous and, afraid that the girl would insist on having her hair pomaded and powdered, Catherine tried to distract her. “After all,” she pointed out, “you will be wearing the most beautiful gown at the rout.”

Turning away from the glass, Jennifer smiled at her friend despite her nerves. “Besides yours, you mean.”

“All the ladies will envy us,” Catherine agreed lightly. She frowned slightly. “I wonder if the punch was made to my exact recipe? Perhaps I had better go down and make certain.”

“Catherine,” Jennifer said patiently, “you gave Moses your recipe four separate times. Three jugs of beer, three jugs of brandy, three pounds of sugar, and cinnamon and nutmeg. I’m sure he will make it just fine. I believe that you are as nervous as I am.”

“Perhaps I am,” Catherine admitted. “It has been eight years since we had any sort of rout here, and then I was very young. At sixteen I thought of a rout only as a chance to dance and obtain a husband. I had very romantic notions, at that age.”

“Perhaps you will be less nervous if you think of tonight as a chance to dance and obtain a husband,” Jennifer suggested.

“Heavens, Jen, I can’t dance anymore.”

Jennifer had momentarily forgotten her friend’s infirmity, so graceful did Catherine look in her ball gown. “Well … perhaps not. But you can flirt and talk. No doubt you will enrapture every man in the ballroom.”

Catherine did not answer. In her mind she was remembering the last rout she had attended, the one celebrating Grey and Diana’s marriage. She had been young and she had enjoyed joining in the country dances. She had been partnered with several handsome young men who had showered her with flowery compliments.

A few days after that, her leg had been broken, and now she would never dance again.

She shrugged off her memories, recalling that her true purpose was not to gain a husband but to bring Grey and Jennifer closer together. It mattered very little whether or not she could dance. Somehow she had to get Jennifer and Grey to dance together, and that might be difficult.

Then again, she thought, glancing once more at Jennifer’s lovely gown and youthful beauty, it might not be. It all depended on whether Grey intended to conduct himself like a proper host or if he was in one of his freakish moods.

She closed her eyes in a silent prayer. Everything depended on Grey. And Grey was not in the least dependable.

•  •  •

A half hour later Catherine and Jennifer stood downstairs, greeting the first guests as they arrived. The rout was being held in the east wing of Greyhaven, which, unlike most plantation houses, had a separate ballroom. Routs elsewhere were usually held in the parlor or even in the entrance hall, which was wide and large enough to be used for a number of purposes in most homes. However, when Grey designed Greyhaven he had added two wings to the typical Georgian plan. One of these wings was a magnificent ballroom, modeled after the ballroom of the governor’s mansion. It was a long room with a fireplace at each end. Overhead, four glittering cut-glass chandeliers, known as lusters, were alight with candles. The middle part of the room was bereft of furniture, to permit dancing, but ornately carved Chippendale chairs with ivory damask seats stood along the walls for tired guests to rest their sore feet.

Jennifer’s newfound confidence rapidly ebbed as the guests arrived. The men all seemed to be leering at her. The ladies, clad in brilliantly colored satins and brocades with square-cut or round low necklines that all but revealed their nipples, stared at her with a strange mixture of contempt and avid curiosity. Jennifer understood their attitude better now. As a class, the Virginia aristocracy had only recently acquired the money to build grand houses. The women of the planter class were now able to supervise the spinning and dyeing and cooking, rather than doing the hard labor themselves. And consequently, the aristocracy guarded its position zealously. Like English society, Virginia society had become strongly segregated by class. Though an English lord would have thought otherwise, the Virginia planters of the Tidewater firmly believed themselves to be every bit as important as the nobility. It was crucial to maintain their status in society. They were educated, clothed, and married toward that end.

What Grey had done by marrying her, then, had been a slap in the face of every planter in the area. Grey, with his
glorious home and his endless acres of fine land stretching along the James River, had not seen fit to wed one of the simpering females of his own class. Instead he had wed an illiterate and uncultured woman, and, she recalled, his original plan had been to keep her exactly as he had found her, clad in a rough homespun gown, filthy and uneducated. He had planned to flaunt an utterly unworthy woman as his wife. She imagined herself standing here greeting her guests in her patched indigo gown and worn leather shoes, her hair greasy and her body filthy, and she shuddered slightly at the thought. How they would have stared at her then!

She had to admit that it would actually have been amusing in a bitter and hateful way, but it would have been horribly cruel to her. She had to wonder if perhaps she was not a little mad to have fallen in love with such an uncaring man.

As though her thoughts had conjured him up, she glanced up from greeting a scornful young lady in a floral-patterned cream brocade gown and saw Grey heading in her direction, coming from the main part of the house. Her breath caught in her throat as she realized all over again how handsome he was. Unlike the other men, attired in pastels like ice blue and lime green, Grey was wearing a gunmetal gray satin coat and waistcoat and black satin knee breeches. His clothes were completely unadorned with the braid, embroidery, or ruffles that the other gentlemen sported. His only adornment was the fine Flemish lace that covered his shirtfront, contrasting strongly with the bronzed skin of his face. He had disdained to wear a wig, or even to powder his hair, and his ebony tresses were gathered into a neat queue at the nape of his neck and secured with a black silk ribbon. His hands were clad in pearl gray gloves, and rather than wearing his tricorne he carried it beneath his arm, as was fashionable on formal occasions. She watched him for a moment, transfixed, staring as though he were the only other person in the room. He was so handsome that it took her breath away. And then
he glanced up and saw her, and to her surprise, he stopped short and returned her stare.