The Passions of Emma (6 page)
She had left the old orangery and returned to the house through the front entrance. She often did that, even if she’d only taken a short turn around the garden—she would come back inside through the massive, coffered ebony doors as any guest might do. That way she could get the full impact of the glory that was The Birches. And she would remind herself of how far she had come, and of how vigilant she must always be to keep alive the destiny and the fortunes of the great old family into which she had married.
Only this time a sudden thought brought her to a standstill in the middle of the enormous, echoing, domed and marble-lined hall:
William would be coming home for the wedding.
She touched the back of her hand to her burning cheek. Her heart pounded so hard she feared her ribs would crack. Oh, surely, surely he would come home now. He’d have to come home. He
must
come.
must
come.
She would write to him—no, no, she would have Emma write him, write him and beg him to come. A girl would want her father at her wedding, to give her away.
And Bethel would have a chance to talk to him then, to explain things to him. She would tell him how wrong he had been to blame her for what had happened that night. She would explain how she’d only been doing what needed to be done, what the world
required
be done, for the family, for them all.
required
be done, for the family, for them all.
It was wicked and mean and unfair, what he’d said to her that day he’d left—about her not having a kind and loving heart. She’d tried so hard to be the perfect, genteel wife he deserved, and she did so love him and their children, truly she did. It was just that sometimes other duties had to take precedence. The family as a
whole had to come first, beyond any one individual. As a Tremayne he should have understood that.
whole had to come first, beyond any one individual. As a Tremayne he should have understood that.
She wasn’t the cruel and selfish creature obsessed with fripperies that he had accused her of being. She knew what was important—she’d always known. And she was still as pretty as she’d always been; she was only forty-two, after all. She could bring back that look of wild hunger that had burned so brightly in his eyes the night of the Sparta ball, all she needed was a chance. All she needed was a little time alone with him.
Bethel was smiling now as she smoothed back imaginary loose strands of hair off her forehead. She was smiling as she straightened the stiff Belgian lace collar of her shirtwaist. William would be coming home, and she would have her chance. But she would have to think it through more carefully later, plan her strategy later. Their afternoon callers would be arriving soon, and she couldn’t be found out here in the foyer disheveled and with her face all flushed and the drawing room not yet seen to. It simply would not do.
She finished crossing the hall in a more stately fashion, passed through the heavy, green damask portieres, and entered the drawing room.
She had called it the parlor the first week she’d been here, until one of the servants had corrected her—and what a humiliating moment that had been. The room was a magnificent mix of the exotic and the traditional. Two ribbon-backed Chippendale chairs flanked an antique Chinese rosewood chest with dragon-claw feet. A silk carpet woven by Tibetan monks lay spread over a beautiful teakwood floor that was washed down every week with steeped tea leaves.
Two immense gold bowls from India graced either side of the rare sienna marble mantelpiece. Every day the bowls were filled with freshly cut American Beauty roses grown in the new conservatory. Bethel had set about reassuring herself that the roses were indeed fresh when she noticed a parlor maid bent over the onyx and lapis lazuli piano lamp, trimming the wick.
Bethel didn’t shout, but her voice still cut, quick and sharp, through the air. “You!”
The girl whirled, one hand pressed to her breast, her eyes wide.
“What are you doing in this room at this time of day?” Bethel demanded. Servants in properly run households did not show their faces abovestairs when family and guests might be forced to be reminded of their existence.
The girl jerked her knee and head in a curtsey. “The lamp was smoking and I . . .” Her gaze fell to the floor and her hands drifted helplessly down to twist in her starched apron. “Forgive me, madam.”
“It will not do.”
“No, madam.”
The girl started to give Bethel a wide berth on her way to the door, but then she paused and cast a shy glance up at her. “We’ve been saying, those of us belowstairs, how it’s that happy we are to hear of young Miss Emma’s betrothal to Mr. Alcott.”
For a moment Bethel almost smiled, although it wasn’t the done thing, to exhibit emotion of any sort in front of a servant. “Why, thank you, Biddy,” she said.
They were all called Biddy, the multitude of Irish girls who scrubbed and dusted and “did for” the Great Folk. Years ago, when she’d first arrived at The Birches, Bethel had made a special point of learning all the servants’ names. Until someone had warned her that such familiarity just wasn’t done.
“He’s right handsome,” the girl was saying. “Right handsome is Mr. Alcott, and oh such a gentleman.”
“Indeed, he is generally conceded to be the most eligible bachelor in all of New England. For not only has he inherited a fortune of more than three million dollars, but he—”
Bethel cut herself off, so shocked she almost shuddered. To speak of money, and to a servant no less, was a vulgar, vulgar thing. She couldn’t have been more horrified at herself than if she’d
suddenly taken it into her head to flip up her skirts and show off her bloomers.
suddenly taken it into her head to flip up her skirts and show off her bloomers.
Bethel’s hand fluttered up to the lace at her throat, and she could feel that she was flushing. This, she thought, is what happens when you allow your vigilance to slip even for a moment; when you lose sight of appearances and remember things, speak of things that you shouldn’t.
“That will be quite enough,” she said.
“Yes, madam,” the girl mumbled to the floor, and scurried from the room.
A movement through the brocade-and-velvet–swathed windows caught Bethel’s eye. Her younger daughter, Madeleine, sat in her wheelchair on the veranda, among the potted ferns and a pair of old twig rockers. Emma stood behind her, her hands resting on the chair’s handgrips.
Bethel frowned at the sight of them. A servant would have to be fetched now to take Maddie and her chair back into the house for tea. It would create a fuss they certainly didn’t need on such an afternoon.
And as for Emma . . . She had obediently changed into the beige velvet tea gown, although she must have positively thrown it on to get back outside so quickly. And now she risked rouging her cheeks and frizzing her hair by standing out in the damp like that.
As Bethel watched, Emma half-turned toward the window. She was laughing, and her face shone opalescent in the watery half-light of the gray afternoon. The wind fluttered soft tendrils of her dark brown hair. The bone of her cheek was like the curve of an angel’s wing.
Bethel felt an odd hitch in her chest. It wasn’t fair, she thought, that a daughter could stop her own mother’s breath with her beauty.
The sky lightened just then, glazing the windowpanes and showing Bethel her own reflection in the glass. She reached up and
touched the image as if she could make it go away, like stirring still water in a pond. How old she seemed to be growing of a sudden.
touched the image as if she could make it go away, like stirring still water in a pond. How old she seemed to be growing of a sudden.
Am I still pretty, Mama?
The sunshine-yellow hair had faded some, and she had to enhance its thickness now with rats. She wore high, lacy collars to hide the sagging skin of her neck and chin. Her eyes were still the color of bluebells, but they were fanned with wrinkles that had stayed long after she had quit smiling. After she’d no longer had a reason to smile.
A hollow emptiness clutched at her belly. Somewhere deep inside her there surely lived still that girl who had gone to a ball with gardenias in her hair and hope blazing in her heart.
A gust of wind slapped against the window, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again the day had darkened and she couldn’t see her reflection anymore, only her daughter Emma, so young and beautiful, and with all of her life stretching before her like a shiny road, straight and sure.
And as her daughter’s head tilted back again in laughter that Bethel couldn’t hear, she had the strangest feeling of having missed something important.
“You must be so happy, Emma. It’s a wonder you’re not positively bursting and dripping with it. Like a ripe juicy summer peach.”
Smiling, Emma looked down on the seashell roll of her sister’s pale hair. “What a sticky thought,” she said, her smile growing when Maddie laughed. She laid her lace-gloved hand on her sister’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “And I’m not so happy at all when I remember that I’ll be leaving you and Mama.”
Leaving home.
Emma looked out over the winter-worn lawns to the thick grove of white birches that encroached on the back of the house. Low
clouds snagged their bellies on the treetops, and a salt-laced wind whipped at the bare branches. Yet spring was a certainty still, for it came every year. Emma could feel the promise of spring knocking at her heart.
clouds snagged their bellies on the treetops, and a salt-laced wind whipped at the bare branches. Yet spring was a certainty still, for it came every year. Emma could feel the promise of spring knocking at her heart.
Maddie reached up and patted her sister’s hand, twisting around in her chair. Her eyes sparkled wetly, but whether from their earlier laughter or held-back tears Emma couldn’t tell. It could even have been the bite of the wind.
“Oh, tosh,” Maddie said. “Don’t be such a ninny. To begin with, the wedding won’t happen for another two whole years. And besides, you’ll only be going as far away as the house on Hope Street. You could still see us every day if you wanted, although why you would I can’t imagine. It’s a dream come true. To marry the man you love.”
Emma looked out at the birches again so she wouldn’t have to meet her sister’s eyes. She loved Geoffrey, she did. Only she had a hard time remembering if it was truly her dream or only everyone else’s dream for her.
“But then you’re so pretty,” Maddie was saying. “You could have had any man you set your heart on.”
“Now listen to who’s being the ninny,” Emma said. She tried hard to pretend that her beauty didn’t exist, for it held a power she wanted to explore but was afraid to. “It so happens that it’s Geoffrey I do want, not just any-old-body.”
“And heaven forbid that you would ever become Mrs. Any-old-body,” Maddie said in their mama’s Georgia drawl, and Emma laughed.
Maddie turned back around in her chair and her hands fell together in her lap. She sighed, although it was not an especially sad sound. “Remember how we used to fight over which of us would marry Stu?”
“I certainly never did any such thing.”
Maddie laughed with delight. “But you did, you did. I remember it so distinctly.”
“Oh, the very shame of it.” Emma pressed the back of her hand to her forehead and pretended to be on the verge of a swoon. “I suppose I was young then and more impressed with style over substance.”
“Stu has plenty of substance,” Maddie protested. “It’s only that it’s always been so hard for him, what with Geoffrey being such the perfect son. Poor Stu. I worry about him sometimes.” Her voice softened and a faraway yearning came into her eyes. “Still.”
Emma swallowed around a sudden lump in her throat. She hadn’t told her sister yet that Stuart Alcott was back home, for it would only bring the girl pain. And a horror of the inevitable moment when he would first see her as she was now. Seven years ago, when Stu had left, Madeleine Tremayne had been a gay child of twelve, with a kiss of freckles across her nose and a wide, laughing mouth, a child who was always running off somewhere, to swim, or play tennis, or skate. Not this pale wraith of a creature with her wasted, crippled legs.
Emma suspected that her sister had been in love with Stu all her young life. For Maddie, marriage to the flamboyant and wickedly handsome Alcott second son had probably always been something more than a wistful, girlhood imagining. Although she’d certainly never spoken of such feelings aloud.
But then, they never spoke about either the horrors or the dreams that lay so powerful and enormous among them all. And there wouldn’t be any marriage for Maddie now anyway. Not to Stu Alcott, not to any man.
A memory stirred at the edges of Emma’s thoughts, of a day when they’d all been children and they’d been lounging right here on the south piazza, where she and Maddie were now, among the potted ferns. Next to these old twig rockers with their balsam-stuffed cushions, which had sat in this very place when their father was a boy.
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