Black Rainbow (33 page)

She hoped to please Edmund and spare Jane by her offer, and Edmund's nod and smile proved she had accomplished the first of these aims. Jane exclaimed, "You hate it as much as I do, Megan, you know you do. Edmund, don't ask her."

She was overruled by the others, however, and the parties prepared to set out. Edmund's tall figure was seen to great advantage in a green-and-white-checked coat and striped trousers, with matching shoes. With a languishing glance Miss Gilbert said he only needed a cap with a long feather to be the image of Robin Hood.

"And here is Maid Marian," Edmund said, indicating Megan, whose gown was of the same green as his jacket.

"Off we go then," said Sir William. "I'll be back in a twinkling, ladies and gentlemen, with a fat buck to my score."

"I'll get my quarry before you get yours," Edmund replied. He offered Megan his arm, and they set off in the opposite direction to Sir William.

"Where are we going?" Megan asked, as they walked toward the wall south of the house.

"As far away from Sir William as we can get," Edmund replied. "He is in such a temper, he will blaze away at anything that moves."

"You are in a merry mood, Edmund."

"And why not? Today is the beginning of a new life for me."

The stream was running full, for there had been much rain that season. They crossed it by means of an ancient stone bridge east of the gate and began to climb. The slope was moderate and the trees soon closed in around them.

"You must tell me what to do," Megan said, breaking a long silence. "How do we know where to find the deer?"

Edmund laughed and took her hand to help her over a rise. His face was flushed. "There is a clearing farther up the hill where I think they come to graze. I found spoor there the other day."

Megan's step faltered. Edmund's fingers tightened over hers. "Keep walking. We don't want to be beaten."

They had not followed the path she knew, and she had lost her bearings since they entered the woods. Perhaps Edmund had another clearing in mind. But the Toman glade was the sort of place animals might frequent—secluded, with fresh water and ample grass.

She let Edmund lead her on. He kept her hand in his, his grasp painfully tight. She was scarcely aware of the pain as she fought to face what lay ahead. She had not returned to the glade after that night. To see it now, in Edmund's company . . .

Before they had gone much farther, they heard a crashing below and behind them, like a large animal charging toward them. Edmund dropped her hand and turned. The sunlight
sifting through the brilliant fall leaves made him look like a saint in a stained-glass window.

"What is it?" Megan whispered. "It is coming straight toward us."

A figure emerged from the dappled gloom—a little figure all in brown—gown, hair, and tanned face, like a creature out of an old legend of enchantment.

"I changed my mind," Jane said. She was breathing quickly. "I will be your squire today, Edmund."

"What the devil—" Edmund began.

"Megan is the lady of the house, she should be with her guests. I will close my eyes when the poor deer falls—but Megan would have done that too. You don't mind, Edmund? There is no reason why I should not do as well as Megan— is there?"

"I suppose not," Edmund said ungraciously. "Well, Jane, you have certainly thrown all my plans awry—"

"Have I?"

"But since you are here, you may as well come along."

"Let me carry the gun for you, then."

Edmund handed over the shotgun. "Be careful with it. Hurry, now; you have wasted too much of my time already." He walked away.

Megan was limp with cowardly relief and renewed gratitude. Jane's sensitive kindness was beyond belief; she must have realized where Edmund was going, and intervened to spare Megan the shame and pain of returning to the scene of her crime with the victim of it.

"Jane, dear," she began in a low voice.

"Hush." Jane gestured. "Hurry back, Megan. Go straight back, don't wait for us. Do you promise?"

"Of course. But why do you—"

"No more. Go now." She started after Edmund and did not look back.

Sir william
won the wager. As she retraced her steps, Megan heard several shots echoing across the little valley. It was hard to count them or even determine their original direction; but when the agreed-upon signal came, just after she had crossed the bridge, there was no mistaking it, or the direction from which it came. Megan frowned. Edmund would be put out at losing, and Sir William would not be a graceful winner.

His stout little figure came strutting across the lawn shortly after she had changed and joined the others. He accepted their congratulations and compliments with a smug grin, but he could hardly wait for Edmund to return so he could crow over him. He cast increasingly impatient glances at his pocket watch and finally exclaimed, "Curse the feller, he must have heard my signal. What's keeping him?"

"If he can bag his deer, he may feel less embarrassed at losing the wager," one of the other men suggested with a chuckle. "I know I would hate to face you with empty hands, Sir William."

"That wasn't the agreement," Sir William grumbled. "Ha —I think I see someone coming now. He took his time about it."

For all his skill at shooting, his eyes were not as good as he believed. When Megan turned in the direction he indicated, she recognized the approaching figure as Jane's. She was alone, and she walked very slowly, with a perceptible pause between each step.

A sudden feeling of oppression and foreboding brought Megan to her feet. "Something is wrong," she said, and hurried to meet Jane.

Several of the men followed, infected by her alarm. Jane stopped when she saw them coming. She stood unmoving, her arms limp at her sides and her face as expressionless as a doll's. Megan caught her by the shoulders.

"What is it, Jane? Are you hurt?"

"Not I," Jane said. "There has been an accident. A fatal accident."

Her eyes closed. She slid through Megan's nerveless hands and lay in a crumpled heap at her feet.

W
as mr. belts
very angry when you told him you
not sell?" Megan asked.

Oh, yes. But his ranting and cursing will have no effect. The papers were never signed, and since little Eddie is still a minor, the authority is mine." "I suppose you intend to manage the place yourself," Megan said.

Jane smiled fondly at her. The somber black crepe of her mourning only made her look younger, like a little girl playing at widowhood. Indeed, the color was very becoming to her fair skin and soft golden curls.

"Oh, all the gentlemen have offered to assist me," she said ironically. "Sir William trotted out a nephew for my approval the other day—'quite a clever feller, knows all about figures—the mathematical kind, Miss Jane, heh, heh.'"

Megan smiled, but shook her head reproachfully. "You shouldn't make fun of him, Jane. He was so very kind to help us with—with the arrangements."

Jane looked down at the papers on the desk. "What else could he do? It fit so neatly with his preconceptions and prejudices; he always despised Edmund. He was not at all surprised that such an effeminate dandy would be inept enough to blow his own head off."

"Jane!"

"Forgive me."

"No, my dear—forgive me." Megan leaned forward, her blue eyes swimming with tears. "You saw it. I know the memory must be intolerable."

"Yes, I saw it." Jane turned away from Megan's sympathetic gaze. Sunlight streamed through the library windows, illumining the papers scattered on the desk. Jane itched to get to work at them. There were so many matters requiring immediate attention. Edmund had left no will, and there was no male relative to interfere with her; from now on she had a free hand. But she must remember to get a footstool. Edmund's chair was too big for her; her feet dangled several inches off the floor.

"I suppose you will marry Sam," she said. "Oh, don't look so scandalized, Megan, I don't mean tomorrow or next month; you will insist on the proper period of mourning. But someone will have to act as guardian for little Eddie and watch over his affairs. If you plan to marry again—"

"If I do," Megan said, blushing, "I hope you will always be a sister to me and manage everything just as you think best. But, Jane, you yourself will marry one day—"

"No. Would it be so tragic if I didn't?"

"Perhaps not," Megan said, after reflecting for a moment. "Perhaps marriage is not always the best for everyone. I only want what you want, Jane."

"I have everything I want. Almost everything—and what I don't have, I mean to get. Now run along, Megan, and let me deal with these papers."

After Megan had gone, her long black skirts and veils trailing gracefully, Jane leaned back in her chair. For the first time since it had happened, she deliberately let her mind
retrace the steps along the dark path that had ended in the glade.

There was no beginning—no moment she could point to and think, "That was when he made up his mind to do it." It had come on so gradually, so insidiously, that probably Edmund himself had not made a conscious decision until the last hour of the last day, and only after a dozen other attempts had failed. Any one of them might have succeeded, but it was typical of Edmund that they had depended so much on chance. He was not a violent man, and he had, to a greater extent than anyone she had ever known, the power of self-deception. Even as his hand smeared the oil on the library steps or poured water over his wife's unconscious body before opening the window wide to the cold night air, his waking mind was absolving him of a charge of deliberate murder. At this very moment she could not be certain he had done those things, or others she suspected. There was no proof—no hope of convincing even the potential victim, much less a jury of his peers. That was why she had had to act.

Like Edmund himself, she had gone far down the dark road before she realized where it would end. The strange dream she had had that night in the Lovell Tower. . . . The figure at the end of the shimmering path had held out a murderer's bloody hands—but had the face been Edmund's or her own?

She had known him for what he was after he imprisoned her, yet she had been naive enough to believe his assurances, to trade her silence for a promise of kindness and tolerance he had never meant to keep. Besides, it would have done her no good to denounce him. No one would have believed her. They would have thought her mad. The vague, suppressed suspicions aroused by Megan's "accidents" were too incredible to be considered seriously—until the day she sat by Sam's bed and heard his white lips whisper of his own fears for Megan. He knew Edmund better than she, he was well aware that he risked his own safety by returning to St. Arca,
but he had been unable to stay away. The final damning piece of evidence was Sam's denial that he had ever written to Megan. Only one person could have sent the note that took Megan out of the house into the path of a dog that had been trained to kill.

Once convinced, but well aware that she still lacked the power to convince others, she had stretched her wits to the limit to discover a way out. There was a path of escape for her. Once she got her share of the proceeds from the sale of the mill, she could leave—abandoning the home she loved, abandoning Megan. She could not take Megan with her. Sooner or later, wherever they fled, the law would track them down, and the law gave Edmund the right to force his wife to live with him. He would never sue for divorce; it was a humiliating, complex process.

I had to do it, Jane thought. There was no other way. Sooner or later he would have succeeded—and then it would have been the child—and Sam—and me, unless I kept silent and let him have his way. If he had shot me—if my blood, not his, had crimsoned the grass at the foot of the Toman stone—Sir William and the rest would have commiserated with him on his tragic loss, and he would have gone on to make sure of Megan—and Sam—and the baby. He would never have stood in the dock or spent an hour in prison. And how ironic that the very inequities of the system that drove me to do it should be my best defense. Dear old Sir William; it would never enter his stupid, kind, male head that Edmund's death could have been anything but an accident.

She began to sort through the papers. Edmund had left his desk in a frightful mess; accounts, bills, unanswered letters were all jumbled together. And here were some of the old papers relating to the house. One day, if she had the leisure, she would go on with the research Edmund had begun. The change in the name of the manor, for instance—it would be interesting to know when it was changed, and why.