The Shadow Queen (9 page)

He was dressed for riding and was waiting for her at the large barn where all Pot Springs’ horses were stabled. At the sight of her shoes and skirt he quirked an eyebrow. It was a query she ignored. Making him believe she was no longer desperately eager to spend time with him on horseback was the most fun she’d had in ages.

“Uncle Emory said you had a new hunter you wanted to show me.”

“I have. I think he’s going to impress you.”

Even though it was two years since they’d last met, he didn’t give her a hug or a cousinly kiss on the cheek. Wallis didn’t mind. Cousinly kisses weren’t the kind she wanted to experience.

Side by side, but not touching, they walked into the barn and down its wide central walkway. Several horses’ heads protruded inquisitively from the loose boxes, but Wallis couldn’t see any that were familiar.

“Pa has been doing a lot of buying and selling lately,” Henry said, reading her thoughts. “One of his latest acquisitions is perfect for you. A three-year-old filly with a gentle disposition. At the moment she’s out being exercised.”

He stopped in front of the end box. “This is the Southern gentleman I wanted to show off. His name is Thunder and he’s pretty darn special, don’t you think?”

Riding was simply a challenge Wallis had set herself, and now that thanks to Henry she was fairly competent at it, she had no real interest in horseflesh. Even she, though, could tell that the horse in question was special. He was black as sin with a white star on his muzzle so perfect it looked as if it had been painted.

“He has the best head I’ve ever seen on a horse,” Henry said, “and he’s as fast as the wind.” He turned his head away from Thunder to look at her, saying with a grin, “Not a horse for you to ride, Wallis.”

“No.” There was a look in Thunder’s eyes that made Wallis reluctant to even stretch her hand out toward him. “I’m not even tempted, Henry.”

“But you do want to ride again this summer?”

Though the great doors at either end of the barn were open to let a cooling breeze blow through, the interior of the barn was in deep shade. Combined with the smell of hay and manure and horseflesh, it made for an arousingly intimate atmosphere.

“Yes.” She held his eyes, glad there were no stable boys around to spoil the moment. “Of course I do.”

He was wearing riding boots and breeches and a checked linen shirt that was open at the neck. He’d obviously already been out riding, for there were beads of perspiration on his throat. She couldn’t take her eyes from them. He had to kiss her now. He
had
to.

He made a small movement preparatory to moving away from her, and, knowing she was about to lose her chance of equaling Pamela in the being-kissed-by-a-mature-man stakes, she shot a hand out, laying it against a bulging bicep.

For a split second he hesitated, heat flooding his eyes, and then in sudden capitulation he pulled her roughly against him, lowering his head to hers.

The shock of actually being kissed in such a way after dreaming about it for so long nearly made Wallis forget all she had learned from Pamela’s experience with Sergei Romanov. As Henry’s lips parted hers, she remembered and, sliding her arms up and around his neck, obligingly allowed his tongue to slide past hers in the way men seemed to like.

Unlike Pamela, who had found the experience very peculiar and more than a little unpleasant, Wallis found it dizzyingly arousing.

Breathing hard, Henry finally lifted his head from hers. “You’re a minx, Cousin Wallis. And far too old for your years,” he said thickly. “You’re also a Warfield and you’re not to go around letting anyone else kiss you like this. If you do, you’ll get a reputation for being fast, and then you’ll never get a decent marriage proposal from anyone. Understand?”

“Yes,” she said, understanding very well.

“I think you should go back to the house. Spend some time with my mother. Give her all the Baltimore gossip. We’ll go riding together tomorrow and then, the day after, I’m leaving on a visit to some of Pa’s friends in Charlottesville.”

She nodded, knowing very well why he was leaving for a stay in Charlottesville. Uncomfortably aware of her age, he was putting distance between the two of them. That he was doing so because he found her such a very great temptation filled her with elation. That there would be very few further such kisses between the two of them didn’t trouble her. He’d given her what she wanted—her first experience of a truly adult kiss—and, though she had a crush on Henry, she’d never been serious about him. The only person she was life-and-death serious about was John Jasper.

A
fter vacation was over she tried hard to accidentally-on-purpose run into John Jasper. It wasn’t easy. The Bachmans didn’t live close to either Biddle Street or East Preston Street and didn’t attend Baltimore’s Episcopalian Christ Church, where Wallis spent her Sunday mornings.

It was in June, on her grandmother’s birthday, which fell shortly before her own birthday, that Wallis got lucky where John Jasper was concerned. It was a Saturday morning and as she turned onto Preston Street, awkwardly carrying her grandmother’s present—a cashmere shawl lavishly tissue-wrapped and boxed—John Jasper entered it on the opposite side of the street.

Wallis clutched the box tighter and with a pounding heart waited for him to cross the street toward her.

He did so at a negligent stroll, his hands in his trouser pockets, the June sun glinting on his tightly curling dark hair.

“Hi, Wallis,” he said as he walked up to her. “Where are you going?”

When she spoke, her voice sounded so unlike her normal voice it could have come out of a squeezebox. “It’s my grandmother’s birthday. I’m taking her a present.”

“Does she still live at number thirty-four?”

There were blue-black glints in his hair that she’d never been aware of before, and his eyes weren’t a straight brown, as she’d always thought, but a golden brown. Simply looking into them turned her knees to jelly.

“Yes.” Her voice was still a squeak. She paused, took a deep breath, and said, trying to sound as laconic as he did, “How is it you know where she lives?”

“My father is on the board of one of your Uncle Sol’s companies.”

Whether he had intended to walk down Preston Street she didn’t know, but that was what he did, walking along beside her so close she could smell the faint tang of lemon cologne. She wondered if he had begun shaving. He was a few months older than her, already sixteen. If he hadn’t, and if the lemon tang wasn’t from cologne, than it was from the soap he used. Whatever it was from, it was something she liked a great deal.

“Someone told me the other day you had a little dog.”

His hands were still in his pockets. She wished they weren’t. If his hands had been free she could have carried her grandmother’s present in her left arm and let her right hand fall down so that even if he didn’t take hold of it, the back of it would brush against the back of his.

“Yes. My stepfather gave him to me. He’s a French bulldog. His name is Bully.”

John Jasper chuckled. “I reckon that’s a pretty good name for a bulldog, Wallis. Why isn’t he with you?”

“My grandmother doesn’t like dogs. At least, she doesn’t like them in the house, and Bully wouldn’t like being tied up outside.”

John Jasper looked across at her speculatively. “How would you like it if I took Bully for a walk now and then? I like dogs and I’m pretty good with them. I used to have a Siberian husky. He was a great dog. He died last year, and I still miss him.”

“Why didn’t you get another?”

They were fast approaching number 34, and Wallis began walking as slowly as possible, not wanting to reach it, not wanting their time together to be over.

“My ma didn’t want another big dog. The dog we have now is a Pekingese. He’s kind of cute, but he doesn’t like going for walks. He sits on my ma’s knee whenever he can, and when she’s not around, he sits on the sofa.”

They’d reached number 34, and there was nothing for it but for her to come to a halt. She turned toward him. “You can take Bully for a walk any time you want, John Jasper.”

What she didn’t say, but what she intended, was that when he did so, she would go along too.

“That’s great, Wallis. I can’t wait.”

He made no move to continue on his way, and she made no move to climb the steps to number 34’s front door.

For a long moment they held eyes. Wallis’s heart was beating so loud she was sure John Jasper could hear it.

“You’re awful pretty, Wallis,” he said at last. “Would you mind if I touched your hair?”

She shook her head, her throat so tight she couldn’t speak.

He took both hands out of his trouser pockets and then slowly raised his right hand, gently touching her glossy, near-black hair.

They were standing very close now, so close that Wallis knew if anyone in number 34 saw them she would be in very serious trouble.

There was an expression in his golden-brown eyes that she recognized. It was the same heat-filled expression she had seen in her cousin Henry’s eyes the moment before he’d kissed her.

She raised her face slightly, letting John Jasper know by the expression in her eyes that even though it was bright daylight; even though they were on a public, but blessedly deserted street; and even though they were smack outside her grandmother’s house, if he wanted to kiss her, she wasn’t going to do anything to stop him.

He made a small sound that excited her immeasurably, and then he bent his head to hers, kissing her softly full on the mouth.

Compared to her cousin Henry’s kiss, it was a very chaste kiss, but Wallis didn’t mind because she knew it was a far more special kiss than the one Henry had given her. For one thing, she was certain that it was John Jasper’s first kiss, and for another she knew John Jasper wasn’t, within weeks, going to announce his engagement to a girl from Charlottesville.

When he raised his head from hers, his cheeks were flushed and he looked very pleased with himself.

“I’ll be seein’ you then, Wallis,” he said, belatedly shooting a glance up at number 34’s windows to make sure no one had been watching. “Tell Bully I’ll be coming for him soon.”

“I will.”

He turned away, beginning to walk back down Preston Street the way they had come, his hands back in his pockets.

As she ran up the steps to the front door, her heart singing with happiness, she could hear him begin to whistle. It sounded as if he were whistling “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

When her grandmother’s black butler opened the door to her, she walked into the house with a smile on her face so wide it reached from one side of it to the other.

H
er grandmother was in the drawing room, seated in her favorite rocking chair. Her Uncle Sol was standing a foot or so away from her, smoking a cigar.

Her grandmother liked cigar smoke and often asked Sol to blow it in her hair so that she could enjoy the fragrance of a Dutch Masters Palma long after he had left the room. Wallis, too, wasn’t averse to something she thought of as being distinctly manly.

To celebrate the fact that it was her birthday, her grandmother wasn’t wearing black bombazine but a gown of far more expensive pure silk, her only jewelry a jet mourning pin.

“Thank you, Bessie Wallis, dear,” she said, accepting the present Wallis gave her. “Your uncle has something very like a present for you, too. Don’t beat about the bush, Solomon. Tell Bessie Wallis what it is you have in mind for her.”

Sol blew a plume of blue smoke into the room and then said in his usually stiff manner, “You will be sixteen in a week or two, Wallis. It’s time to be thinking about your eighteenth-birthday debut—and how, over the next two years, you will be preparing for it.”

That her uncle was already talking about her debut sent a thrill of anticipation down Wallis’s spine, though she wasn’t quite sure what he meant by her preparing for it, for the preparations would, surely, all be done by him.

“You’ve been a good scholar at Arundell,” he continued, turning to one side so that he could flick ash from the end of his cigar into the empty fireplace, adding as an afterthought, “apart, of course, for mathematics.”

Wallis remained wisely silent.

“I’m not sure, though, that there is anything to be gained by your staying on at Arundell until you are eighteen.”

Alarm flared through her. “But what about my graduation, Uncle Sol? Everyone stays on for graduation. If I don’t, everyone will think it’s because … because …”

“Because I no longer wish to pay your fees?”

It was so exactly what she had been going to say that Wallis flushed scarlet.

“There will be no fear of them thinking that, Wallis. Let me tell you what I have in mind.”

Sol crossed the room and crushed the butt of his cigar out in an onyx ashtray.

“Two years at an exclusive finishing school will be of far more use to you than another two years at Arundell,” he said, when he again turned toward her. “It isn’t as if you need another two years of schooling. You are never going to have to work for your living. Your aim, like all young ladies of your social class, must be a good marriage to a wealthy young man of illustrious background.”

There was no way Wallis was going to disagree with him. A finishing school would be wonderful. To the best of her knowledge, there wasn’t one in Baltimore. The nearest was Oldfields, at Glencoe—and Glencoe was quite a distance away. If her uncle had Oldfields in mind, it would mean her becoming a boarder—and being a boarder, living away from home, would be a terrifically exciting adventure. Oldfields, however, was known to be the most expensive and fashionable finishing school in Maryland, and the fees would be colossal.

She dug her nails into her palms, wishing as hard as she could that she would get the right answer to her next question. “Which finishing school did you have in mind, Uncle Sol?”

“Oldfields. I’ve already paid it a visit. You will be a boarder, of course, but a boarder in exceptionally genteel surroundings. The school itself is a large mansion set in several hundred acres of woodlands, and students are housed in a large wing that has been added onto the main house. There is a large ballroom with crystal chandeliers for dancing lessons. Deportment is practiced on a magnificent grand staircase. The drawing rooms are hung with silk. Altogether, I couldn’t find fault with anything. If you are happy to make the transition there, I will put it in hand straight away.”