Spinning the Moon (55 page)

I sat up suddenly, my ears straining to hear the faint notes of music that crept in through the window. The fine hair at the nape of my neck bristled as I recognized the odd tune and Rebecca's voice. I stood and left my room to find my niece, even though the humming had stopped abruptly.

I stopped in front of Delphine, who was waxing the foyer floor. “Have you seen Rebecca?”

“Yes, ma'am. She be in her room, resting afore supper.”

I shook my head. “But I just heard her singing and it was most definitely not coming from her room.”

“That be where I puts her, Miss Catherine, and she cain' get by me without me seeing her, so she must still be there.”

Confused, I stepped past her until I reached the rear door. I found Rebecca on the back steps with Samantha on her lap. She did not look up as I approached but stared out at the gathering gloom. I sat down next to her and began smoothing her hair with my hand.

“How did you manage to sneak past Delphine?”

I saw her cheek crinkle in a smile but she still did not look up at me. Night had completely descended, leaving only the moon and the stars in the sky, like a queen with her court. “It is a secret.”

“A secret? Does that mean I cannot know?”

She looked at me finally, her bright eyes shining like two more stars in the moonlight. “Not yet, Aunt Cat.”

I nodded, not wanting to press her. “It is too dark for you to be outside and I do not want you to catch a chill. Why do you not come inside now and get dressed for supper?”

She shook her head vehemently, her coiled curls shaking in agreement. “No—not yet. It is too dark in there.”

I put my arm around her small shoulders and drew her closer. “But it is darker out here. Inside we have the lamps lit.”

I felt her shiver under my hands. “No, Aunt Cat. Inside there are dark places I am afraid of. There are shadows that live in the corners
and I do not want them to get me.” Her wide eyes shone as she raised them to mine. “Like they got my mama.”

I wanted to refute her words, but I could not. I knew the dark shadows she spoke of, had felt them even as a child, and could not deny them now as an adult. As much as I wanted to dismiss her fears as a child's fancy, I could not. They were all too real to me. Instead, I held her close and patted her head.

She pointed a chubby finger up to the moon, full and round like a ripened peach. “Marguerite says that on nights with a full moon, the Indian lady walks with her baby.” She tilted her head, as if trying to hear a far-off sound. “If you listen real good, you can hear the baby crying. Marguerite says the baby cries because she and her mama were buried under the house and they want to get out.”

I raised my ear to the slight breeze, listening intently, and I heard it. A high-pitched cry, shifting in and out at the whim of the wind. I stood and moved down the steps to hear it better. I heard it again and I started, a mother's first reaction at the sound of a crying child. My own child's cries were forever stilled, yet the plaintive cry reached out to me with silent fingers of need.

“Do you hear it, Aunt Cat?”

I nodded and stepped slowly off the bottom stair. Then I remembered the glass bottles and realized where the sound was coming from. I turned to Rebecca. “It is the wind blowing through those old bottles that are hung on the trees. It sounds just like a baby crying.”

Her wide-eyed look was one of certain disbelief, but she did not say anything. Taking her hand, I said, “Come on. Let us go get dressed.”

She placed her hand inside mine and followed. As I guided Rebecca up to her room, I thought of the Indian woman and her child buried under this house, their spirits crying to be free. And I thought of Elizabeth, her spirit just as wistful and strong, and wondered if her time here made her feel as if she had been buried within the four walls of this dark house and had ached to the point of desperation to be set free.

*   *   *

The evening meal passed slowly. I felt John's constant gaze upon me and was grateful for Rebecca's presence. The child charmed me, and I found myself seeing more of her than just the things that reminded me
of Jamie. Her blue eyes would still suddenly catch me off guard at times, causing a cascade of grief that I struggled to keep hidden. But her indomitable spirit and sweet hugs had begun to take the chill out of my cold heart.

When Delphine arrived to take Rebecca to her room, I rose, too, eager to excuse myself. But John stayed me with his hand. “Please wait. I have something I wish to give to you.”

I nodded and allowed myself to be led into his library. He strode over to his desk and, after unlocking the top drawer, took out a black velvet rectangular box. He returned to stand in front of me again, but made no move to either present the box to me or to open it himself.

“I first met your father in New Orleans. It was at my club there, and he had been invited by an associate of mine to discuss business. I found him a very charming man, and was especially enthralled with his stories of his beautiful Saint Simons. I think that he loved it almost as much as you do.”

He smiled at me gently, as if he knew that speaking to me of my father and of my home needed to be handled with great care. “But I soon realized that what he loved most of all were his two daughters. He spoke of you both, but the one he spoke most about was the daughter who loved openly and freely, whose beauty was inside and out, and whose nature was as wild as the waves she liked to race into with bare feet. She was an artist who painted the natural beauty of her island with a lover's touch.” He lowered his eyes, staring at the box. “I think I fell in love with her then. She seemed so foreign and exotic compared to the prim Bostonian misses my mother had been tossing in my direction since I had grown out of boyhood.” His gaze met mine again and I caught sight of an emotion I thought I recognized before he hid it again from me.

Holding up the box, he opened the lid. “I had these made for that girl, before I had even met her, knowing I wanted her for my wife.”

I looked inside and held my breath. The double-strand necklace was composed of the most perfectly formed pearls I had ever seen, faultless in their round, creamy beauty. They circled the strand, each in graduating size before coming to an end in a large, tear-shaped ruby. I didn't move, but continued to stare at the necklace.

He continued. “I pictured these on her flawless skin and against her
long black hair.” He reached behind me and began to loosen the pins in my hair. I heard them fall one by one to the floor behind me, each one a discarded drop of my resistance.

“Did Elizabeth ever wear it?” I held my breath, awaiting his answer.

His eyes darkened. “No. I never gave them to her.”

I waited for him to continue, my lungs filling with unspent air and a distant hope.

“Your father never told me how young you were. It was not until my visit when I saw you that I realized. But it was too late then. I had come for a wife, and I was not a man used to disappointment. And Elizabeth . . .” Slowly he raised the pearls from their black box. “Elizabeth used all her charms on me, making me believe that she and you shared more than just appearance.”

I did not move as he placed the pearls around my throat, leaning over me to clasp it in back. He lifted my unbound hair and placed it about my shoulders, then studied me closely, his warm breath brushing my neck. “Yes,” he whispered. “This is how I pictured you.”

I stepped back, my defenses rallying at the first taste of hope. “I am no silly virgin so easily seduced.”

He moved toward me and bent his head near my ear. “Neither was Elizabeth.”

I looked up at him in shock. “You lie!”

“I am no liar, madam.” He took a deep breath, his gaze locked with mine. “And that is the last I shall speak of it.” He moved his lips down to my throat, almost making me forget the implications.

“Why did you not press for an annulment?” I had to force the words out, my lungs gasping for air.

“Because I fancied myself in love with her.” He lifted his face to look into mine, his emotions completely hidden from me. “But for you and me, Catherine, our motives to marry are much more tangible, are they not?”

My hope crumbled with the hairpins at my feet. I tried to push away, but he would not allow me.

“My dear Catherine. We have made our decision. Now let us make the best of it.”

He lowered his mouth to mine and I discovered I had no more will
to fight him. I eagerly opened my lips to his, letting him devour me with a passion that seemed to fill us both. His hands swept down the bodice of my dress, pulling me closer in an intimate embrace. His hands teased my hips, sliding upward to my waist. I felt as if I should stop him, but my traitorous arms wrapped themselves around his neck instead, pulling him even closer.

Suddenly, he stopped, and he lifted his face to give me a mocking look. “Madam. It would seem that you are as impatient for our wedding as I.”

Ashamed to have to admit the feelings that he stirred in me, I said nothing.

Abruptly, he stepped back, only a sheen of perspiration on his forehead belying his true emotions. “I will not be bothering you any more this evening. You are free to retire.”

He bowed, then left the room, but not before I caught sight of a satisfied smile on his face. I was not sure what his game was, but I was quite certain I did not like being a part of it. Perhaps he was testing me—to see how much alike I was to Elizabeth. I wondered at his abrupt dismissal of me, and if my physical response to him had been an affirmation or a warning.

My hands reached up to the chilled beads on my neck, their touch like cool fingers of warning. Slowly, I undid the clasp, then dropped the pearls into their coffinlike box, leaving them on his desk to find in the morning. Turning down the lamp, I climbed the stairs to my room, ignoring the deepening shadows that seemed to reach out to me from the darkened corners of the house.

I
awoke the following morning feeling as if I had not slept at all. I could tell from the brilliant white-yellow glow of the sun peering in between the wooden slats that it was late morning. Slowly, I sat up. It was then that I noticed the black box on my night table.

Reaching over, I picked it up and flicked open the lid. Inside lay the pearl necklace, and I did not doubt for one moment how it had come to be in my bedroom. I wondered how long he had stayed, watching me sleep, if he had stayed at all. But I knew why he had felt compelled to leave the box instead of waiting until morning. He was not a man accustomed to having his wants and desires curtailed in any way. If he wanted me to have the necklace, then have it I would.

I rang for Marguerite to help me dress. While outwardly she continued with the appearance of the dutiful servant, I watched her closely. According to Clara Lewiston, Marguerite had been Elizabeth's confidante, and I wondered how much Marguerite knew of Elizabeth's secret life and of her death. I felt like a mouse, and Marguerite seemed like a cat—toying with me while I tried to pry loose a morsel of truth.

“Marguerite, how well did you know my sister?” I sat at the dresser, waiting for her to fix my hair, and watched her in the mirror.

She smiled faintly. “I was her maid. I suppose I knew her no more or no less than other maids know their mistresses.”

“Did she ever tell you anything personal—something only you were privy to?”

She lifted my hair off my shoulders, smoothing it down my back with her hand. “She told me lots of personal things.”

I waited for her to continue, but when it was apparent that she would not, I said, “Did she ever tell you anything that might have been some clue as to why she would want her life to end?”

Her eyes glittered in the mirror with an indecipherable emotion, and I imagined that her loyalties toward her former mistress still held firm. Gently, I said, “She is gone now, Marguerite. I only try to understand a sister I loved dearly, to make some sense from her passing. To manage to find peace with the knowledge that I will never see her again.”

She took a deep breath. “Miss Elizabeth was not a happy woman, no matter what she had. There was nothing that could make her happy. She was like a child crying for the moon, and even if Mr. John had roped it and brought it down for her, Miss Elizabeth would have quickly tired of it.” She pulled the brush through my hair in a long, slow stroke. “And she did not care whose life she made miserable while she was searching for her happiness.”

“Do you mean John? Was their life together really that unbearable?”

She shrugged. “There are some who bear it better than others and some who just look until they find a way out.”

She fixed my hair in silence, allowing me to mull over our conversation and John's words of the previous evening. If it were true that Elizabeth had not been a virgin on her wedding night, then Elizabeth had been set in her ways long before she married John. I felt no little relief at the thought. I did not want to think that my soon-to-be husband had anything to do with Elizabeth's restlessness. Then again, since she and I had been raised in the same home, would I, too, be susceptible? Or were Elizabeth's demons hers and hers alone?

Due to the lateness of the hour, I ate breakfast alone. The quiet darkness of the house smothered me, and I made a mental note to do something to brighten the interior soon. I listened for Rebecca's voice, but only the brooding silence of the house answered.

After eating, I found Rebecca and took her for a jaunt along the levee in her mother's small buggy. I enjoyed listening to her laugh and hearing her stories of her life on the plantation. It did not escape my notice that she never mentioned her mother at all.

When we were through, I placed her in Delphine's care while I retired to John's study to attend to some personal correspondence. Since my arrival at Whispering Oaks, I had not yet written to my friends and neighbors on Saint Simons. I had been putting off telling them that I would not be returning, but the time had come. John had given me a
wedding date two weeks hence, and I needed to adjust myself to my new situation. Writing our names together with a wedding date in a letter seemed to be a prudent way to go about it.

I had been writing for more than an hour when I heard the front door open. Heavy footsteps approached the library, and I chastised myself for the excitement I felt when I recognized who it was.

John seemed surprised to see me at his desk, but his surprise was quickly replaced by a smile. He clutched a medium-sized traveling trunk he held in his arms.

“I am afraid I have been caught.”

“Caught?” I raised an eyebrow.

He stepped forward and placed the trunk on the floor by the desk. “Yes. I drove into town to pick up your wedding present. I asked for these from an artist friend in New Orleans shortly after your arrival here. And now I have a reason to give them to you.”

I stared at the trunk, unsure of my response. “I thought the necklace was my wedding gift.”

He sent me a knowing look, as if realizing we were both thinking of the box sitting on my night table. “No, seeing you wear it is your gift to me. This is my gift to you.”

I stood and walked around to his side of the desk, trying to give all my attention to the trunk. But it was hopeless. Whenever he was near me, I could scarce remember to breathe, much less take note of anything else.

“Here—you might find use for this.” He reached down and flicked one of the latches with his fingers.

“Oh yes. Of course.” My fingers fumbled as I tried to unlatch the two metal loops on the front of the trunk. I managed the first, but I couldn't seem to get my fingers to do the second.

John seemed amused, as if he knew the source of my discomfiture. He stooped to help me. “How about I do this for you?”

With ease, he flicked open the latch and lifted the lid. Stepping back, he indicated the open trunk. “I remembered shortly after you arrived here you mentioned that the Union soldiers had destroyed all your canvases and paints. And that there was nothing left for you to paint. I hope that my gift will soften your heart for at least one Yankee.”

Cautiously, I peered inside. When I recognized what it was, my first instinct was to cry. It had been so long since I had received a gift, much less a gift so personal and so full of meaning. Cradled inside wadded mounds of newspaper lay an artist's palette and an array of small glass jars filled with different colored paints. Rolled and fitted neatly in the corners of the trunk were canvases of various sizes.

John stood close to me, studying my face as if to gauge my reaction. When I did not speak, he said, “I had some of the paint pigments already mixed for you—and I hope I chose the colors you would have. I tried to re-create the colors of your home—of the ocean and sand and the marsh.”

I waited for a moment, trying to find my voice. “This . . . this is extraordinary.” I found it hard to find the appropriate words.

“I want you to be happy here.”

I looked into his eyes and wondered if he were thinking of his first wife and her desperate unhappiness. I felt hurt that he would again confuse me with my sister. I gently closed the lid of the box, not wanting him to see the longing in my eyes as I contemplated painting again. “I am not Elizabeth, John. You do not need to bribe me to keep me here.”

He stiffened, and the hope I had seen in his eyes was quickly hidden by his usual sardonic smile. He took a step away, as if to distance himself from me. “My dear, I thought the offer of my bed was enough of a bribe to get you to stay. This gift is merely gravy.”

I stepped back, the gift nearly ruined for me. He had cut me deeply and I did not want him to see it. I moved to walk past him, but he grabbed my arm.

“I am sorry, Catherine. I should not have said that.”

I faced him, trying to keep my fury under the surface. “I am not my sister, and I do not expect you to treat me as if I were. Whatever was between you two, it is past. And if you expect a real marriage between us, then you had best remember it.”

He pulled me closer to him, and my wanting of him nearly consumed me. He angered me, yet I still could not resist him. “Forgive me,” he said, and before I could contemplate what he was asking forgiveness from, he covered my lips with his, obliterating all thought.

The world seemed to spiral out of control for a moment as my hands
grabbed his hair and pulled him closer. He pressed me backward against the desk, our bodies touching intimately. With visible control, he pulled himself back, disentangling my arms from around his neck. His eyes burned as he watched me try to find my breath. “I could never mistake you for Elizabeth. Only a fool could do that.”

Embarrassed again by my easy acquiescence to his touch, I backed away from him and then fled up to my room. I paced for a few moments before my gaze caught sight of a piece of Elizabeth's riding habit stuck in the doors of the armoire. Yanking off my clothes, I pulled on the habit, struggling in my haste with the row of tiny buttons up the back. I desperately needed to burn off the energy that John's presence created in me. Perhaps then I could be calm and impartial when next he approached me.

As I pinned the riding hat to my hair, I recalled the glimmer of hope in John's eyes when he had given me the paints. John McMahon was a difficult man to fathom, but the very gesture of the gift told me that perhaps within the dark depths of his soul lay a kind and tender heart. A side to him, if it existed, he was not at all comfortable in letting others see.

Not sure why I did it, I slipped the lodestone into my pocket before walking quickly to the stables. I spotted Mr. O'Rourke and greeted him warmly. He still treated me with aloofness, due to the accident on the flooded road, no doubt, which was why I always gave him my biggest smile. I had the strong feeling that I would need as many friends as I could find if I were to make a home for myself at Whispering Oaks.

He saddled Jezebel for me and allowed me to go by myself only after I solemnly promised to stay on the levee road and not venture anywhere else. I gave Mr. O'Rourke a bright smile; then Jezebel and I took off at a brisk walk.

I kept a sedate pace as we passed through the lane of weeping oaks, then gave Jezebel the lead as we raced toward the levee. I loved the feel of the wind kissing my face and tugging at my hair. I was a little girl again, with no concerns or worries, my future laid out ahead of me as sparkling as the sun-dappled river.

Slowing my mount, I allowed her to trot along the levee road as I stared into the murky depths of the Mississippi. How tranquil the water
seemed, yet I knew of the strong undercurrents that could sweep one under without warning. Unlike my ocean, who showed his wrath with froth-tipped waves, the river was an insidious thing; so unassuming on the surface yet turbulent and deadly underneath.

As I turned my horse to head back, I caught sight of another rider approaching me. The rakish angle of his hat and foppish dress gave away his identity before I even recognized the face of Philip Herndon.

His face seemed unusually pale as he drew alongside me, and for a moment he did not speak. Finally, as if remembering his manners, he doffed his hat and bowed low. “My dear Cat, forgive me my manners. I was so struck by your beauty that I was paralyzed for a few moments.”

The stunned expression on his face made me almost believe his words until I recalled that I wore Elizabeth's riding habit. From a distance, I must have resembled her greatly.

“Hello, Philip. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

He nodded, his smile wary. “Are you alone?”

“Yes, I am. But only because I promised not to get into trouble.” I smiled, but it was not returned.

He leaned close to me. “Forgive the impudence, but I am glad to find you alone. I need to speak with you, and I would not be able to speak candidly if you had company.” It was clear from his implication as to whom “company” referred.

Jezebel stepped forward to nuzzle Philip's mount as if they were old friends. He continued. “I heard from the Lewistons that there is to be a wedding soon at Whispering Oaks.”

I lifted my chin. “Yes, there is. John and I are to be married.”

His face darkened. “How could you, Cat? Especially after what he did to Elizabeth!”

“Whatever happened to Elizabeth, Philip, was of her own doing. I do not hold him responsible.”

He scoffed, looking up to the sky momentarily. “Not responsible? But she is dead! Can you honestly tell me that you do not believe he had anything to do with it?”

“Yes, I can.” I realized with a start that I was telling the truth. Despite all the unknowns, I had believed John when he claimed innocence in Elizabeth's death.

Philip grabbed Jezebel's bridle and leaned close to me. “Do not believe him. He is a dangerous man, Cat. And a Yankee. He's not to be trusted.”