Revenge in a Cold River Read online

  Or had her grief, and her lost child, turned her mind from reality to a nightmare that never resolved itself?

  SINCE BEATA WAS IN mourning, there were few places she could go alone in public. Too often she walked in the park along the smooth gravel paths under the bare trees as she was doing now. The beauty of their stark branches against the sky pleased her. Their nakedness was not masked by leaves, and there was a unique grace to it.

  She moved slowly, more because she was loath to return home than for any other reason. And yet dressed entirely in black, walking with a measured pace and not stopping to speak to anyone, she must have appeared to be the perfect, traditional mourning widow, solitary under a leaden sky. People did not approach her, treating her supposed grief with respect.

  She felt no grief, except for the wasted years she had spent, hating Ingram and yet doing nothing about it. She had allowed him to convince her that there was nothing she could do. But was that true?

  Had imprisonment been freedom of another kind? She could not make her own decisions, which meant she had not had to think, or consider, take any responsibility for the results. The excuse was perfect. “I had no choice. I couldn’t fail because I was not allowed to try!” If no success were possible, then equally, neither was any failure. As an errant wife if she had left him then the law would have brought her back, if he had wished it. Perhaps he would not have. She had not tried.

  How childlike, in the ugliest way. It was not innocence; it was the abdication of responsibility.

  She walked down the slight incline, past the shrubbery—now only the evergreens in leaf—and went over the bridge.

  But she had a little longer to decide what she would do, and how. Ingram had left her very well provided for financially, so she had no need even to consider how she would live. Which meant equally that she had no need to marry again. But she wanted to marry Oliver Rathbone…didn’t she? It had been only Ingram’s stubborn survival that had kept them apart.

  And the fear of another involvement in emotions, and in intimacy. Had she the courage to put all the pain and humiliation of the past behind her, and try again?

  She stopped and gazed at the dark brown water.

  She must stop this. It was ridiculous. Courage! Nothing worth having was gained without courage. Or if it were, then it was lost again the first time a hard wind blew. She despised cowardice, and yet here she was on the brink of it herself.

  She turned and walked briskly back the way she had come.

  —

  THAT EVENING SHE WENT again to Aaron and Miriam Clive’s house to dine. The excuse for it was a further discussion on the chair that was to be endowed in Ingram’s name. That was if anyone should inquire—or worse, offer a criticism of her for leaving her home for a frivolous reason such as merely dining out.

  It would be so much easier to boast a little about the endowment, rather than give them a freezing reply as to the impertinence of such a remark.

  She dressed in black, of course, but in a different gown from the previous time. This one was more feminine, the silk softer and more becoming. She wore the traditional jet jewelry. Whitby, where the best jet was mined, must make a fortune out of bereavement!

  She would rather have worn pearls; they were so much more flattering to the face than the jagged black facets of jet. But she was not in a mood for weathering the comments, spoken or imagined.

  Actually it was only admiration she saw in Aaron Clive’s face as she was shown into the withdrawing room where he and Miriam were standing beside the fire, waiting for her to arrive.

  Aaron bowed, smiling, and complimented her on the gown. Miriam, in deep burgundy herself, took both Beata’s hands warmly and bade her welcome.

  “We are waiting for Dr. Finch?” Beata asked, glancing around. “I am so glad I did not cause you to delay dinner. I was afraid I would be early, and then left a fraction late.” It was the truth. She had dithered in her decision over the jet…as if it mattered to anyone!

  “Dr. Finch is not coming,” Aaron replied. “We really don’t need to inconvenience him this evening. We can easily inform him of any decision we reach.”

  Miriam shrugged her beautiful shoulders and smiled. “We never intended to ask him. This is simply an excuse to have a pleasant dinner together. He’s nice enough, but if he were here then we would have to talk about the chair, the subjects, or the requirements of students permitted to study, and so on.” She regarded Beata critically. “You look awfully tired, my dear. You must be bored to weeping. London is very nice, but don’t you long for the wild days in San Francisco sometimes? I don’t remember anyone mourning there; there were no tears.” She smiled suddenly, her whole amazing face lighting. “Wouldn’t you love to go out in the sun, in a pair of whaddayoucallums, and ride a bicycle over one of the hills?”

  That was not true. People lost many they loved, but they mourned inwardly, as Miriam herself had done. But Beata chose not to say so. She laughed in spite of herself, in her memory feeling the wind in her face, and the freedom of wearing “bloomers,” big like a skirt, but divided like trousers. One of the best of inventions. “Not quite like riding sidesaddle in Rotten Row,” she agreed.

  “But we would do that, too,” Miriam said quickly. “All dressed in black, of course,” she added. “Perhaps even with a half veil. I always think ladies’ top hats with a half veil one of the most seductive headwear imaginable. Far more than the most glittering tiara.”

  “You will invite comment,” Aaron pointed out. Beata could not tell from his voice whether that was a criticism, or merely an observation, but she thought it the latter, as there was laughter in his eyes.

  “Good,” Miriam said, smiling at him for an instant before turning back to Beata. “I should hate to go to so much trouble, and then not be noticed.”

  Beata had no idea whether she meant it or not. From the look on Aaron’s face, neither had he. Could she not know that she was always noticed?

  They spoke of current events and people in the news, until it was time to go through to the dining room and take their places. All three of them sat at one end of the magnificent gleaming cherrywood table.

  The food was excellent. A delicate clear soup was followed by a white fish in sauce, then a rack of lamb with lightly cooked vegetables. But Beata was too engaged in conversation to care very much. They moved from one subject to another, observations on common memories of the past. Sometimes it was of people they had all known. They were far too well-mannered to speak of what was openly controversial, yet they managed to differ quite often.

  “He was always very agreeable,” Aaron remarked of one gentleman they mentioned.

  “Of course he was,” Miriam agreed ruefully. “He was a banker. He would have been considerably damaged if you had removed from his keeping the money you had with him.”

  Aaron was startled. His dark eyes widened. “You really thought him such an opportunist?” There was disappointment in his face, though whether at her, or at the possibility that she could be right, Beata could not tell. She recalled the banker clearly enough. He had three quite comely daughters to see married well, and the responsibility of their making successful matches never seemed to leave him.

  “Not so different from London,” she observed with a smile. “One does what one has to, to care for one’s own.”

  “He was charming,” Miriam agreed. “Although charm is skin deep…” She glanced at Beata, then back at Aaron. “It’s a practice, not a quality. Fame, fortune, and friendship can be won or lost on charm.”

  Beata saw a flicker of irritation in Aaron’s face. “What is charm?” she asked quickly, to forestall any sharpness between them. “Can you tell, beyond that it is there in people you like?”

  “Or who take you in, until it is too late,” Miriam added. “You realize that what you had believed was warmth is actually cold, and completely empty.” There was a momentary edge to her voice that sounded like pain, but she was still smiling.

  “I don’t always
like charming people,” Aaron said with a slight downturning of the corners of his mouth, but rueful, not angry.

  “It is the quality that makes you believe that they like you, whether you initially feel that about them,” Miriam replied with complete certainty. She did not look at either of them.

  “Believe that they like you?” Beata caught the precise wording.

  “Yes…correctly or not,” Miriam agreed. She seemed to avoid Aaron’s eyes deliberately. “They might not actually like you at all. In fact, quite the opposite. But you may not ever know that. Some people are beguiled by charm all their lives. They never see it, probably because they know better than to look.”

  “How foolish.” Aaron shrugged. “And perhaps essentially vain. Just because someone smiles at you doesn’t mean more than that they have good manners.”

  “I’m surprised that you should say that.” This time Miriam did look at him. “I would need all my fingers and toes to count the people who believed you liked them because you treated them with such warmth. It was always one of the qualities for which you were known.”

  “Perhaps I did like them,” he said, then glanced at Beata, and she knew that beneath the surface lightness he was studying her intently. Why? What had changed without her realizing it?

  “I always had the impression that you were far too wise, and too gracious, to allow any other belief,” Beata said quite honestly. Then she turned to Miriam. “And that warmth and inner vitality lifted your beauty above that of any other woman in California.”

  Aaron put his hand out and touched Miriam’s arm. It was gentle, affectionate, but quite unmistakably a gesture of possession.

  They finished the meal and all three of them returned to the withdrawing room. They spoke easily of many other memories. Aaron was very relaxed and he was surprisingly funny, when he chose. Beata did not stay late, but she left with laughter still ringing in her ears, and a startling feeling of being alive again.

  —

  MIRIAM KEPT HER WORD about riding with Beata in Rotten Row, that lovely long earthen and gravel path beside Hyde Park where ladies and gentlemen of the aristocracy and of high fashion took their daily ride on horseback, frequently regardless of the weather.

  This day was dry, but there was a hard, cutting wind whining a little in the bare branches above them. It was not a morning to dawdle in conversation as the horses walked sedately. It was definitely an occasion on which to move to the front of those getting ready, then take a brisk canter along the open stretch ahead. Had it been twice the length, they would both have chosen to urge their horses into a gallop.

  They came back breathless but with their hearts pounding and the blood drumming in their ears. They gave their horses to the grooms and took the waiting carriage back to Beata’s home, not far away.

  “Thank you, that was marvelous,” Beata said cheerfully as they took their riding boots off in the hall and went in stocking feet into the morning room, where the fire was burning nicely. A few minutes later one of the footmen brought slippers, including a pair for Miriam, and two silver-handled mugs and a jug of steaming hot chocolate.

  “Do I have to pretend solemnity?” Beata asked with a smile as the footman closed the door behind him, leaving them alone.

  Miriam smiled back. “I should be disappointed,” she admitted. “I was hoping you would feel something good—relief, exhilaration, at the very least—the chance to forget propriety and do as you wished.”

  “I did,” Beata said frankly. She looked across at Miriam sitting comfortably a little sideways in the chair. She did not have the smooth perfection of youth anymore, but the laughter and the passion in her face would always capture the attention, and perhaps it would always disturb.

  Memories came back to her of gold rush days…not just of the town or the bay with its jungle of ships of every kind, mostly abandoned by their crews who had left them, with all they could carry, to go to the goldfields.

  The hot chocolate was finished but Beata had not bothered to ring the bell for anyone to take the tray away.

  Miriam sat opposite her, her hands folded on her knees, not comfortable anymore. “Do you remember Walt Taylor? A big man but very gentle.”

  Beata tried to recall, but nothing came to her: no face, no voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Miriam said quickly. “I think that was before we really knew each other. Piers was still alive….” She tailed off as if the words had evaporated into the warm, fire-lit room but the name of Piers Astley drove out all other recollections and for a moment Beata saw her expression, the lost look.

  “I’m sorry,” Miriam said again, leaning forward compulsively, gathering herself. “That was clumsy of me. Here you are mourning the death of your husband only a couple of weeks ago, and I am talking of twenty years in the past. But…something of the edge remains, the sudden cut where you thought it was all healed.” Indeed she looked as if the pain were raw inside her and time had done nothing to heal the wound. “I really am sorry, Beata. I did not mean to be so thoughtless.”

  “Please don’t apologize.” Beata did not find it hard to say. “It was not sudden, like Piers’s death. Ingram was ill for over a year, and he was not a young man.”

  “But you’re young,” Miriam said warmly.

  Beata smiled with a quite natural ease. “Thank you, my dear. I admit that under the black weeds, I feel it. Most of the time, I look forward to the future.” That was only partly true. She also dreaded it. The hold of the past was very strong, as if Ingram’s last grip on her had not loosened with his death.

  “Most of it? You have times of grief. It’s natural. I didn’t know Ingram, but you must have memories that linger, fill your mind with sorrow.”

  Oh, yes! She could see Ingram’s face in her dreams. She could feel the touch of him, smell his skin as if he had only just let go of her.

  Should she give Miriam the answer she expected? The hypocrisy of it almost suffocated her.

  “Yes, I do,” she agreed. “You might have found Ingram interesting, but you would not have liked him.” Was that too much truth? She longed to be able to tell someone, to talk to Miriam as they had years ago, sharing young women’s secrets, as if they had been sisters.

  Miriam stared at her, the beginning of understanding in her eyes. The softness of her expression almost evoked their old intimacy. Was it conceivable that Piers Astley had abused Miriam the way Ingram York had abused her? Was that the understanding in Miriam’s eyes?

  She should change the subject, if she could—or take the chance to speak.

  “It is a…relief.” She chose the word intentionally. It left her room to interpret it differently if she changed her mind and wished to retreat instead. She was afraid, on the brink of not being alone with her secret wrapped up inside her, eating away at her like a disease. Would Miriam have the faintest idea what she meant? Has she ever been possessed, owned but not loved?

  “Was he in pain?” Miriam, too, was guarding her meaning.

  “I have no idea,” Beata said more sharply than she had intended. Now that the possibility of real honesty was so close she was irritated at the hesitation in reaching it.

  Miriam’s face clouded. The tenderness in her eyes was so deep it seemed to be her own pain she was feeling.

  “What was he like? Really?” Her voice was no more than a whisper.

  Now it was either the truth, or lie. Either way, it was irreversible. She was soul-weary of lies.

  “For the first couple of years he was all right.” Beata chose her words with as much precision as she could. “Then little things changed. At first it was only the occasional roughness, a deliberate hurting at moments of intimacy. But they grew more frequent until it was every time.” She was going to say it all now. She did not look at Miriam’s face because she knew she would not stop. This was a test. If Miriam was disgusted, disbelieving, then Beata would know she could never risk telling Oliver.

  “He began to exercise other tastes,” she continued. “Revolting thi
ngs that were humiliating, and terribly painful. I should have had the courage to stop him. I tried two or three times, but he hurt me more. Of course it was in places no one else would ever see. I couldn’t go to a specialist doctor, another man, and tell him my husband had done that to me.”

  She felt Miriam’s hand on her arm, very gently, and at last she looked up at her.

  Miriam had tears in her eyes and her face was pale with anger.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Beata sat motionless, hardly breathing. All she could feel was her heart thundering in her chest. Miriam understood. She did not know how or why, but she understood!

  “Thank you,” she said very quietly. “Actually, justice caught up with him eventually, but it was not my doing. Less than a year ago, he had a seizure and was paralyzed, in and out of coma and, I think, nightmare. He couldn’t move, and could only speak a little. He suffered a great deal. It would have been more merciful if the first seizure could have taken him.”

  “How hard for you…waiting,” Miriam said softly. Then the anger was gone from her eyes and there was only a tenderness. “Piers died very quickly, I was told. He was shot in some stupid kind of brawl, in a saloon up in the gold country to the north, where he was looking after Aaron’s affairs. That was what he did. He was trying to stop a fight, and got in the way.” She stopped, her voice gravelly in her throat.

  “And you were just…told about it?” Beata tried to picture hearing such news about a man you had truly loved, not one whose death was your release.

  “It must have been like a stab in the back from an assassin you did not even know was following you,” Beata whispered. “I can’t imagine it.”

  Tears filled Miriam’s eyes. “They buried him out there. I rode out a few days after. The hills are beautiful, spring flowers everywhere. People in dusty clothes on the sides of every river and stream, panning for gold. You can see it in your mind. Women scraping at the earth to dig it up enough to plant greens and vegetables. Shacks with nothing over their beds and a stove of some sort, or even an open fire outside.” She gave a short, jerky laugh. “They don’t call it gold fever for nothing. But those wild days had their advantages, too.”