All for Love (16 page)

‘You shall have it. And I will resign myself to finding you in full flirtation with Monsieur — what did you say his name is? — Farot? — when I return.’

‘Tarot.’

‘You do not sound altogether certain yourself.’ How disturbingly quick he was to catch the nuances of her speech. ‘I must certainly meet the gentleman. Keep him for me, my dear, I beg you.’

He had been, as usual quite right. He had no sooner vanished into the crowd of gentlemen round the buffet than Tarot appeared at her elbow. ‘
Enfin
,’ he said. ‘The husband, I collect?’

‘Precisely. And eager to meet you. I have told him that you are at once an old acquaintance and my latest conquest, so you will pray act the part.’

‘It will be easy.’ A languishing glance that she found detestable. Hyde had been right in what he said. Tarot was superlatively fine tonight. ‘You are admiring my
tenue
,’ he read her thoughts. ‘You can see how completely I trust you,
ma
mie
. I spent my last few
sous
today so as not to disgrace you tonight. You’d hardly believe, would you, that one could obtain so much elegance so quickly, here in Savannah. But at a price, I must tell you, at a price.’

‘Yes.’ This was her cue, and there was not a moment to be lost. ‘But I must want you to expect nothing from me until after our party next week.’

‘Oh? And why not, pray? I thought we had understood each other well enough last night.’

‘Oh,
yes
.’ Anguished conviction in her tone. ‘I beg you to believe me that it is simply that I cannot find the funds.’

‘The devoted husband is so close-fisted?’

‘No! But —’ This was a safe enough chance to take. ‘You know me. My allowance is paid quarterly. On the first of the month.’

‘And here we are in mid-April and you have spent the lot?’ To her heart-throbbing relief he laughed. ‘
Ma
petite
, sometimes, last night, I found myself thinking you hardly yourself. Now, I can see I was wrong. You are my Josephine right enough. So — the allowance is gone until July! You are hardly suggesting that I wait till then.’

‘Oh, no! You see my earrings?’

‘I have been admiring them.’

‘Oh, no, you haven’t. They are in the worst of taste, and you know it. A mistake I made, back in Paris. But gold and sapphires, just the same. They are part of a set ... my plan is to wear them at our party next week, and then you shall have them — A piece at a time,’ she added hurriedly. ‘It will be less likely to be noticed that way. I wear them very seldom.’

She did not like his smile. ‘Keeping me quiet by instalments,
hein
? We have come a long way, you and I, since Waterloo. And the fine husband? You think he will not notice?’

‘I hope not.’ Passionately she hoped that before Hyde should notice, Josephine would be back to deal with her own problem in her own way. ‘And here he comes,’ she added, with relief. ‘I had best make you known to him. As an old friend.’

‘Yes, indeed. An old, old friend.’ There was more in his tone than she wanted to understand.

And yet the introduction went off easily enough. Hyde was at his most agreeable, delighted to meet a friend of his wife’s and eager to hear about Tarot’s experiences in Russia. This innocuous subject lasted them to the end of the interval, when Hyde, somehow, was first in giving Juliet his arm. ‘We have decided to set a new style, my wife and I,’ his smile for Tarot was entirely friendly and Juliet breathed a sigh of relief. ‘The Constant Couple, or something of the kind. Come, my love, or we will disturb your dear friends the Broughtons.’

***

The week that followed was so busy, both with plans for their own party and with arrangements for the reception of the President that Juliet hardly had time to watch for the message from Josephine that never came. To her relief, Tarot had merely paid her a formal call, had found William Jay and a couple of other young men with her and had contented himself with a brief visit and an expressive glance, as he said goodbye, round her sumptuously furnished drawing-room. He was, he told her, greatly looking forward to the party to which she had been so kind as to invite him.

So was not she. But each day’s hope that Josephine would return and rescue her from her predicament was disappointed, and each day she found it impossible to decide whether she was glad or sorry. In the meantime, she got on with the preparations for the party as best she might, ably assisted by Anne, Alice and old Venus. ‘Of course Venus knows,’ Alice had told her. ‘They all do, by now. Here as well as at Winchelsea.’

‘And haven’t told?’

‘Other folks’ slaves? I should just about think not.’ Alice was affronted. ‘We free servants don’t reckon much on those others. And as to telling the family’s secrets; why, ma’am, we’d rather die.’

Another problem had been solved for Juliet, as once before, by Hyde, who summoned her into his study one morning and gave her what struck her as a simply immense sum of money. ‘For the party,’ he explained, as she wondered wildly whether here was a chance to pay off Tarot. ‘I wish you to pay cash for everything,’ he went on. ‘It is unusual, I know, but so is the state of business in town.’

‘Things are so bad?’ She had been half aware, despite her own private anxieties, of a state of carefully concealed tension among their business acquaintances.

‘Not good. Aside from the effect on public confidence, the President’s visit could hardly have happened at a worse time. I only pray that the expense of entertaining him will not be the last straw for poor Scarbrough, who is deep in enough already, what with his new house and the
Savannah
. Will you mind very much, my dear, if, when this party is over, we retrench a little in our style of living? I would wish to be able to help Scarbrough if it comes to a crisis.’

‘Of course I won’t mind!’ But, she thought gloomily, Josephine would. ‘May we not move back to Wichelsea,’ she went on eagerly, ‘as soon as the President’s visit is over?’

‘You’d like that?’

‘Of all things.’

‘Then we most certainly will. And now, if you will excuse me, I must leave you, my dear. There are a million things to think of in connection with the President’s visit. I can only thank my lucky stars I can leave our own party in your capable hands.’

‘Thank you.’ The compliment brought her so near to tears that it was lucky he had already turned to leave her. She ought to be grateful that his affairs kept him away from the house for most of what would almost certainly be their last few days together. She found it impossible to make herself so.

The day of the party came, and still no word from Josephine. Juliet had secretly taken to studying the shipping lists, but could find no mention of the
Liberty’s
arrival at Charleston. Josephine must still be wind-bound at Norfolk. She sighed, set her teeth and went to make sure that the floor of the two rooms that were to be used for dancing had been adequately chalked. With Hyde’s permission, she had made one change in the usual arrangements for a Savannah party. There was to be no separate downstairs buffet for the gentlemen. ‘I hate your American ways of separating the gentlemen from the ladies at parties,’ she told Hyde, who laughed and wished her luck in fighting it. ‘And how about the waltz?’ he had gone on to ask.

‘Oh dear!’ Suddenly she was coldly afraid, remembering that other party where Hyde had suddenly forbidden the waltz, she was sure, to prevent her from dancing it with Fonseca. Thank God, Tarot had had the sense to keep away from her, but he was bound to come to the party, was bound, like the rest of the gentlemen, to drink a great deal of everything from champagne to whisky punch ... After that, anything might happen ... ‘Let’s not have it,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘The gentlemen paw one’s gown so! And their hands not always of the cleanest!’

‘Very well. But don’t be surprised if you hear yourself accused of setting up for a prude!’

She tossed her head in a familiar gesture of Josephine’s. ‘Who cares for that?’

But, alone, she sat down to write one of Josephine’s own perfumed little notes, to be sent off, by hand to Monsieur Tarot. As an old friend, she said, she was hurt that he had let a whole week pass without calling.

It brought him within half an hour, and, mercifully, she was alone to receive him. ‘You sent for me,
ma
mie
?’ He kissed her hand. ‘You have relented? Thought again?’

‘I think of nothing else.’ It was true enough. ‘And the more I think, the more I see that we must be practical, you and I.’ Alone with him, it was easier, and safer, to speak French. ‘There is something you need to know. There was a Monsieur Fonseca, here in Savannah.’ She paused, uncertain how to go on, and he interrupted her.

‘Who sleeps now, in the graveyard across there. Naturally, I have heard of him. Monsieur the husband’s first and only duel. And a dead shot, they tell me.’ His smile froze the marrow of her bones. ‘Do you remember holding the candles for me to snuff with my pistol,
ma
petite
?’

There was no need to feign a shudder. ‘That’s just why I sent for you,’ she took her cue. ‘To make sure you know that if Hyde dies his entire fortune goes to a disagreeable cousin in Charleston and I am left to eke out existence on a widow’s pittance.’

His smile was patronising now. ‘You really think I had not discovered that for myself? Do you imagine Monsieur Purchis would be alive now if I had not? You underestimate me,
ma
chère
.’ He sighed, and picked up hat, gloves and cane. ‘Might it not have been better to pretend that some of your concern was for me? “The Constant Couple”,
parbleu
.’ He quoted Hyde’s words at the theatre with a controlled fury that frightened her more than anything else. ‘Do you think I have not been tempted, daily, to make a widow of you?’ He laughed. ‘A widow!’

Cold sweat prickled at his tone. ‘But a poor one.’

‘Precisely. So have no fears for the rich husband. I shall be the perfect guest tonight. You will see. And, tomorrow, I will call on you to receive your first “gift”. I shall have left my gloves behind. So careless! But you, in your goodness, will have them ready packed up for me, in a neat little parcel. With the sapphire necklace inside.’

‘I said the earrings.’

‘And I say the necklace.’ Their eyes met, cold and steady, but it was hers that fell first.

‘Very well. The necklace.’ And Hyde wanted to retrench.

Chapter Fourteen

Tarot stayed stone cold sober throughout the party, and Juliet found this, curiously, almost more frightening than anything else he had done. William Jay, on the other hand, seemed to have acquired the American habit of indiscriminately mixing claret, champagne and various forms of whisky punch. Dancing the third quadrille with her he confided, with flushed indiscretion and a loud voice, his anxieties about Mr. Scarbrough and his builders. ‘They’ve not been paid; they’re beginning to complain. But what can I do, Mrs. Purchis?’

‘Keep quiet about it, I should think.’ Her answer came out more tart than she intended, but she had noticed for herself that Scarbrough had new lines in his face.

He was not the only one. Had it been a mistake not to provide a downstairs retreat for the men? As it was they tended to get together in little, anxious-looking, low-talking groups, and more than once she had to use her hostess’s privilege to sweep down on them, break them up and ruthlessly find them all partners for the next dance. They did not, she thought, much like it, but, inevitably, they obeyed. After all, to them, she was Mrs. Purchis of Winchelsea.

Lord, how angry they would be if the imposture was ever discovered. It was a thought that haunted her these days. All very well, in a way, for her. She would be out of it all, nursing her memories, far away in France. But Hyde — what would it do to Hyde? No time for these thoughts. She looked about for the next thing to do, caught Tarot’s eye and made him take her to the buffet for a glass of iced lemonade.

‘A most delightful party.’ His eyes were fixed on the sapphire necklace.

‘Thank you.’ Mechanically.

In fact, it seemed endless. She could hardly believe it when the musicians had packed up their instruments and the last guest kissed her hand and thanked her. Hyde was downstairs, seeing Mayor Wayne to his carriage. She was suddenly so tired she could hardly stand, but here was Anne appearing, as always, when needed. ‘You’ll look after the tidying up?’

‘Naturally. Get you to your room,
petite
, you look worn out. I’ll bring you some hot milk presently.’

She also brought Tarot’s gloves, which she had retrieved from behind the potted palm where they had arranged he should leave them.

‘Bless you, Anne, I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ Juliet looked up with a start as the boudoir door opened.

‘A more successful party than I had hoped. My congratulations!’ As Hyde entered the room, Juliet breathed a sigh of relief that Anne had had the wits to bring not only Tarot’s gloves, but all the other trifles their guests had forgotten. He looked at the little pile, ‘One can always tell how people have enjoyed themselves by the number of fans, and gloves and reticules they leave behind. You will have a busy day tomorrow giving all these back.’

‘It looks like it. But it was a good party, was it not? Even without any waltzes?’ It was the last one she would ever give for him and she found herself absurdly anxious for his praise.

‘Perfect. If only young Jay had stayed sober. I was grateful to you for silencing him so effectively, my dear.’

‘Bless me, Hyde, did you hear that? I sometimes think you positively ubiquitous.’ And that, she told herself crossly, was a word Josephine would never have used in a thousand years.

‘Where you are concerned, I would like to be.’ Hyde had apparently noticed nothing out of the way. ‘But you look fagged out. I’m a selfish brute to keep you a moment longer from your bed.’

The morning proved him a true prophet. The house was thronged with callers, and the parcel for Tarot, with its fortune in jewellery tucked tidily inside the right hand glove, was merely one of many Juliet handed over to their owners. ‘You’ll be careful.’ It was all she had a chance to say to him.

‘I am always careful.’ He smiled that unnerving smile of his. ‘I am come to pay my adieus for a few days. I am off to Charleston this afternoon. It is a town I have longed to revisit. But naturally I shall return for the festivities next week. I shall look forward to seeing you then, Mrs. Purchis.’

‘Yes.’ Smiling mechanically, registering that he meant to have the earrings next week, she was filled with terror lest he encounter Josephine in Charleston. And yet what more sensible than that he should take the necklace and dispose of it there?

Meanwhile, the preparations for receiving President Monroe were going on apace. The pavilion in Johnson Square was almost finished, and William Jay could talk of nothing else. The
Savannah
too, was. undergoing a drastic spring-cleaning. The President was to be taken for a trip downriver on her, to Tybee Island.

‘And Scarbrough?’ Juliet asked Hyde.

‘Is turning his new house upside-down ready for the President. And looking worse every day. I shall be glad when this state visit is over.’

‘And so shall I.’ But would she? Every time she saw the
Savannah
, lying quietly at anchor below the bluff, she faced, all over again, the probability that when the steamship left for Europe, she would be on her, with everything over. Curious how much worst of all it was that she would not even be able to say goodbye to Hyde. Josephine would come back, any day now. And she must disappear without a word. Cinderella at midnight, but forever. She might as well die. Going over the
Savannah
with Hyde, she had wondered in which of those elegantly furnished staterooms she would cry out her heart.

***

‘Are you as tired as I am?’ Hyde picked up the bezique pack and shuffled expertly. It was the evening before the President’s arrival, and they had spent all morning touring the route he was to take, from the bluff, where he would be saluted by the cannon George Washington had given the city and review the Savannah Volunteer Guards, by way of Johnson Square and William Jay’s pavilion to Scarbrough’s house.

‘Tireder, if possible.’ Juliet glanced idly at the hand he had dealt her. ‘But at least you look better, however tired.’ It was her one comfort. She had had a letter from Josephine that morning, from Charleston. A quick scrawl, written as the
Liberty
docked, it had warned Juliet to be ready to change places at a moment’s notice. ‘I’m not going to miss the President’s visit.’ When she wrote it, Josephine had not had Juliet’s letter, which would have been awaiting her in Legare Street. But it could only speed her coming. Juliet swallowed convulsively. Whatever happened to her, she must not let Hyde be exposed to the appalling scandal that would explode about them if Josephine mismanaged her return. And yet, what more could she do to protect him? On her instructions, Alice and Anne had warned the servants to be ready for anything. Their kind, sad faces told her that they would do their best, for Hyde and for her, if not for Josephine.

‘Devil take it!’ Hyde’s unwonted imprecation betrayed his own state of tension. ‘The front door bell. At this hour! Yes, what is it, Moses?’

‘Mr. Scarbrough would be glad of a word with you, sir. He says he’s sorry it’s so late, but it won’t keep.’

‘Oh, very well, Moses, show him in.’

‘Here, sir? He said it was private, and most urgent.’

‘Of course, here.’ Impatiently. ‘I’ve nothing private from Mrs. Purchis.’

But Scarbrough, entering, was visibly taken aback by the sight of the two of them, sitting facing each other across the card table.

Juliet, on the other hand, was delighted to see him, as, deep in her own thoughts, she had forgotten her role and was beating Hyde soundly, using the method her father had taught her. ‘Mr. Scarbrough,’ she rose and held out her hand. ‘What news in town?’

‘None that I know of.’ If he had looked fagged out before, now he looked desperate. ‘I’m this moment returned from Charleston. There were a few last minute purchases for the house. You will forgive me, ma’am?’ He turned to Hyde. ‘If I could have one word alone with you?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Hyde. ‘There is no crisis so bad that Mrs. Purchis can’t share it.’

Scarbrough’s tired face flushed darkly. ‘I hope you’re right!’ He reached into his coat pocket. ‘There’s your crisis!’ The gold and sapphire necklace fell like a glittering snake across the cards. ‘I saw it in a jeweller’s in Charleston. There could be no mistaking it.’

‘I hope you contrived not to pay more for it than it is worth.’ Hyde’s cool voice brought him a look of amazement from Juliet.

‘If you want to know, I got it dirt cheap. Well, there it is. And I wish you joy of it. It was sold by a Frenchman, the jeweller told me.’

‘Well,’ said Hyde reasonably, ‘of course it was, since I gave it to him. I’m only sorry to hear he got such a poor price for it. As for you, Scarbrough, I must thank you for your kind intentions, and reimburse you. I’m sorry, my dear,’ he turned to Juliet, ‘that your white elephant is returned to you so quickly.’

‘Never mind.’ Juliet swallowed astonishment, picked up her cue and touched the necklace disdainfully. ‘After all, it has a certain charm, in a vulgar kind of way.’

Hyde laughed. ‘Perhaps you had better wear it to entertain President Monroe after all, my dear. In the meantime, come to my study, Scarbrough, and tell me what I owe you.’

Left alone, Juliet sat transfixed, desperate, racking her brains for a way out of this disaster. Nothing for it, that she could see, but to admit to being blackmailed by Tarot, but what in the world should she say he was blackmailing her
about
? What, for Josephine’s sake, was the least she could admit? But there was worse than that. What could she tell Hyde that would not send him out to fight another duel; this time with a man who snuffed candles with his pistol?

‘Thinking of a new set of lies for me,’ Hyde’s cheerful voice from the doorway made her start convulsively. ‘Don’t you think it’s time we rang down the curtain and called an end to the play?’

She put a bewildered hand to her brow. ‘Rang down the curtain? I don’t believe I quite follow you, my dear.’

His laugh was bafflingly normal. ‘Well, that makes a change, considering what a dance you have been leading me. Not that I haven’t enjoyed it, of course. It’s been a pleasure to watch you, and, if I may say so, to lend a hand here and there.’

‘Lend a hand? Hyde, what are you talking about? Have you gone crazy?’

‘No.’ He settled himself comfortably in the chair across the table from her and picked up the sapphire necklace. ‘That’s just what I’m telling you. That I’m not quite the fool you think. Did you never consider —’ He paused for a long moment, smiling — ‘Juliet, that my wife might have told me about her cousin who might have been her twin?’

‘Oh!’ Her hand went up to her mouth. ‘You mean you knew?’

‘From the first. Well,’ he conceded the point. ‘Almost from the first. Another time you plan such a substitution there are a few simple hazards you should consider. You did not think, for instance, how my wife loves to drench herself in chypre. Any time I was in doubt as to which of my charmers was entertaining me, I had only, if you will forgive the vulgarism, to smell her. A hand ... a handkerchief ... I could tell in an instant.’

‘And you let it go on?’

‘I’m afraid so. Shocking of me, I know, but it is not often that such an entertainment provides itself in a man’s life.’

‘“Entertainment”!’ She did not know whether to laugh or cry. ‘You can call it that?’ She was bewildered in a throng of discoveries, recollections, reconsiderations ... ‘And Fonseca?’

He was sober on the instant. ‘Yes. You have a right to ask that. I beg you to believe, Juliet, that I knew things about him — quite apart from his relationship with my wife that made me feel justified. The law could never have touched him. He was a slave dealer, you know. I could tell you things ... But I won’t. At all events, they made it possible for me to do what I did. Well —’ reasonably, ‘it was obvious that his return from Florida would be the end of our play.’

‘So you killed him? Hyde, you frighten me.’

‘Believe me, I frightened myself. I did not know how unpleasant I would find it to have killed a man — even such as Fonseca. Do you know, since we are talking frankly at last, I was really quite glad that he wounded me. Quite aside, of course, from the pleasure of being nursed by you.’

‘Good God!’ There was no end to this confusion of recollections and reappraisals. ‘That time when you got worse —’

‘Well, of course,’ he said. ‘I wanted you back. There seemed no other way. Mind you, it worked rather better than I intended.’

‘It nearly killed you.’

‘But not quite. No need to look so stricken, my —’ He paused. ‘What a remarkable situation! Will you forgive me if I follow habit and continue to call you “my dear”? Juliet is the prettiest name in the world, but I don’t think I dare start using it yet.’

‘Yet? You mean, you intend to go on?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘that depends, of course, on where Josephine is and what she is doing. You do see, don’t you, that you must tell me?’

‘Yes.’ For the moment, all she had time to feel was an overwhelming relief. ‘It’s not so bad as you may, perhaps, think.’ Hideous even to guess at what he might be imagining about Josephine. She hurried into the story of the proposed rescue of Napoleon and found herself actually almost enjoying his amazed expression.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said when she had finished. And then, ‘Forgive me. I’ve never been so surprised in my life. I owe Josephine a thousand apologies. Only, it changes everything. You do see, don’t you, how it changes everything?’