Christie (50 page)

"Garret, darling, for God's sake, please don't do it!

Oh, love, I'd rather die than live the life they have planned for me. Please—"

"Shut up, bitch!" screamed Lucille, and with her free hand, she struck Christie across the face, causing her head to swing sharply to one side.

Garrett took a step forward without thinking as he witnessed this, stopping only when he saw Philip's gun hand thrust the weapon dangerously forward.

"I wouldn't, if I were you, Randall," warned Philip. Then, to Lucille, he spoke even more sharply. "Woman, I warned you of consequences if you allowed your emotions to get out of control in this matter! You will refrain from touching my niece again! Fortunately, we have a better way of dealing with our reluctant little Virginia belle. Have you forgotten? Pick up the child!"

Suddenly Christie realized her foolishness in thinking she could defy Philip's carefully laid out plans. Adam! As long as they had him, they could force her to do anything they wished! How could she have forgotten that! Now, as she saw Lucille bending down toward the tiny sleeping bundle in the basket, her fear was so great, she almost missed Lula's hoarse whisper.

"Christie! Please don't let her
wrestle
with that baby! She'll
wrestle
him straight to misery, for sure!"

Christie's mind suddenly focused. The message was clear. With only an instant to act, she shot Garrett a significant look and thrust forward with one leg, catching the bending Lucille off balance and sending her sprawling forward in a move she might have accomplished easily, even without her wrestling practice with Lula.

The distraction was all Garrett had been waiting
for. As Philip's head turned to behold Lucille's fall, Garrett flung himself forward and completely across
th
e space which separated them in one mighty leap. The fact that he could have used his pistol was swept from his mind as he felt an all-consuming need to put his hands on Philip and mete out a long and lingering punishment. The gun remained, unfired, in his right hand as he lunged.

With a snarl he knocked his tormentor to the floor, sending that devil's pistol skidding across the door jamb. Like a wild beast maddened with pain, Garrett fell upon his victim, seizing him by the shoulders and wrenching his thin frame slightly upward before viciously slamming it downward with a force that thrust his head against the floor in a skull-crushing blow. Now Garrett's strong brown left hand doubled into an enraged fist as he prepared to attack Philip's ashen face when he heard Lula shriek.

"Garrett! Look to Christie!"

Swinging his attention to the next room, Garrett saw Lucille, knife still in hand, crouching on the floor at his wife's feet, ready to spring. With a sound that was half-savage-scream, half-enraged-roar, he lunged at her. In one movement, he wrenched the dagger from her grasp while with his other hand which still clasped his pistol, he brought the weapon across the ivory-complected face with all the strength his incensed wrath could bring to bear. His action was totally borne of emotion, something he had never before allowed himself when anger was his impetus, and his passion allowed him to take no quarter.

The blow lacerated Lucille's face, tearing it open in one long, jagged gash which ran diagonally from
her left eyebrow, across her once-perfect nose which now lay open to the cartilage, to the right corner of her mouth. In that instant it was clear, Lucille would never be beautiful again. Somehow, realizing this, and in great pain, she slumped, sobbing to the floor.

But now Garrett had thoughts only for Christie and he rose and quickly cut her bonds. Christie fell forward into his arms, but had only a moment to savor the sweetness of her haven as, past Garrett's shoulder, she saw Philip and screamed.

With a jerk, Garrett whirled toward his enemy just as Philip's fingers reached the pistol. Flinging Christie out of the way, he raised Lucille's dagger and threw it.

In the hot flash of consciousness that sometimes assaults our senses in moments of extreme danger, Christie took in the scene that transpired in those next awful seconds. She saw the knife fly through the air, to lodge finally in Philip's bony throat, the blood gushing forth in ghastly profusion. She saw her uncle's pale eyes, wide open and staring as he froze in a rigid, half-lying position for a moment before slumping forward in the doorway. At the same moment she heard a shot ring out and saw her husband fall heavily to the floor at her side. There were terrified infant screams coming from the basket on the floor nearby and somewhere a woman's voice was saying, "Oh no! Oh, God!" Then she beheld her husband's still, unmoving brow, and the bright scarlet ribbon of blood spurting forth, and the world collapsed into darkness, and she saw and heard no more.

PART FOUR

Chapter Twenty Nine

Mattie Oliver spoke in hushed tones as she and Celia Trevellyan stood in the open doorway of the master bedchamber at Riverlea.

"It's been over a fortnight, ma'am, and no change."

"Does she always sit and stare here, in this room only?" questioned Celia. "Will she not move about and take the air? My niece was always so fond of the out-of-doors, you know. Perhaps getting her out into it might help."

"Nothing helps, ma'am. We've tried everything. If we take her outside, she goes quietly enough, but only stops wherever we've led her and stares off into the distance, dreamlike, the way you see her now."

They both looked at Christie who sat in a chair by one of the windows, her back to them, her body still and silent.

"What do the doctors say?" asked her aunt.

"They're in a quandary, Miss Celia. Of course, we
all know what must have caused it. That horrible ordeal she went through. But it seems it was the thought of her husband dead that took the final toll. Froze her mind, it did. And the only times she even
seems
to come out of it, just a wee bit, are when she's given the babe to suckle. Then she takes the little one to her breast and croons to him, but—ah! Even there it's not normal. It's not lullabies she sings, but mournful ballads about husbands gone off to war and not returnin', or lovers gone from this life, lyin' in the cold ground somewhere. I tell you, ma'am, it's pitiful."

"And she gave no sign of recognition when my brother came in before?"

"None," answered the old servant, "and the poor man left weepin', he did. Said he'd lost his little girl in the crudest kind of way. But I tell you, ma'am, the most heart-wrenchin' sight of all is the master's pain in all this. Daily, almost hourly, Mr. Garrett comes to hold her, talk to her, tryin' to show her he's alive, and her not seein' or hearin' him, just as if he was really dead after all. Mr. Jesse's worried about him, and with good reason, I suspect. The doctors fear it will drive him mad to keep seein' her this way. Oh, it's a sad house you've traveled to this day!"

Celia uttered a pain-ridden sigh. "It seems the evil influence of that fiend my sister married reaches even beyond the grave. Although, I must say, her house has taken a turn for the better since his death. Her son-in-law has suddenly taken a firm hand in the running of that household and even his wife looks happier than she did the last time I visited. They've agreed to a pact in which she's lost weight and he's
stopped drinking and gambling, and it looks as if it might even be working out. Oh, but the unfairness of it! If any of my nieces deserves a chance at happiness, it's Christie. Why, after all that child's been through—"

"Excuse me, ladies," came a drawled accent from the hallway behind them, and suddenly Lula's tiny form eased its way between them and through the doorway.

"Lula!" exclaimed Mattie. "I didn't hear you were comin'. What new attempt do you have in mind for today?"

"Oh, this time it isn't mah idea, but Mr. Garrett's. Neither of us has given up, you know. And, who knows, this time he may have latched on to something."

She glanced briefly at a tightly wrapped package she held under her arm and then handed it to Mattie. "Miz Oliver, Mr. Garrett asks if you would be kind enough to take what's in here and have it steamed and ready for his wife to wear as soon as possible. And please have one of the grooms saddle Thunder sidesaddle and have him ready. Our Christie's taking a little ride this afternoon."

Mattie took the package and opened it, the contents which spilled forth causing Celia to gasp in recognition.

"Oh, but that's her old turquoise riding habit! Why on earth does he want her to wear that old thing? My Lord! Look! The bodice was even strangely torn and mended again. A mighty fine piece of stitchery, too, but it couldn't fool these old eyes."

Lula chuckled. "Ah can't tell you the reason, but it's important she wear this, and only this, so please, Miz Oliver, hurry up and have the creases and flattened pile steamed out of the velvet. He's waiting for us on the
Marianne."

"The
Marianne!"
exclaimed Mattie. "But that ship's all the way over in Charleston harbor!"

"Ah know," replied Lula. "That's why we've got to hurry. Ah've got to get her there before dark. We'll have her give one good feeding to Adam before we leave, but you'd better send for a wet nurse to tide him over until tomorrow. She may not be back before then. Ah hope to God she won't, because it will mean this plan has worked and the two of them will be spending the night aboard the ship. Now, please, Miz Oliver, could you hurry?"

During the ride to Charleston Lula held Hoss Sense to a slow, controlled gait which allowed her to check frequently on Christie's progress on Thunder. She had attached a lunge line to the stallion and held it firmly at her end as an extra precaution, but the big horse seemed to sense the unusual state of his rider and moved easily behind the mare, giving little indication he would bolt out of control or in any way endanger his mistress. Christie sat her horse perfunctorily with the instinctual balance that comes with performing a skill learned long ago and done so often as to be as natural as the things we do automatically, like breathing or blinking our eyes. She rode competently but was unaware, much as the sleepwalker who perambulates, walking without knowing he does so.

As they rode along, Lula had time on her hands, time in which to ponder once again the chain of events which had led them to this ride, for Christie made no conversation these days and their slow pace meant several hours on the trail. Slowly, carefully, she let the series of vignettes assemble and spread themselves before her in her mind's eye.

First, that horrible moment when Philip Stanhope's pistol shot had cracked the air, sending its ball across Garrett's temple. Like Christie, she had assumed him dead instead of only grazed. There had been all that blood, and it had been only later in a calmer state that she had recalled how head wounds, serious or simple, are almost always bloody affairs. And of course Garrett's blood had been the least of that spilled that night.

Lula closed her eyes for a moment, taking another ounce of grim satisfaction at the image she summoned, of Philip's corpse lying face-down in a pool of blood, his hand still clutching the smoking pistol, his spectacles lying shattered and broken near his head. She muttered an oath to herself as she wished, for about the thousandth time since it had happened, that it had been a slower, crueler death. There were deaths one could suffer . . . Then, with a slight shake of her head, she smiled. She was beginning to think like a Cherokee!

But the worst thing about the evil that monster had perpetrated was that it still continued. Lula glanced at the beautiful young woman in the turquoise velvet riding habit. Why did the innocent always have to suffer along with the wicked? Here was Christie. At one moment she had been young, vital, and alive,
full of the exuberance and joy of life, able to wring the best out of it—not that she hadn't paid amply for those pleasures with her own share of pain. But now, just looking at her infused one with a sense of the injustice of it all. Here was this walking specter, a woman more dead than alive, whose only fault had been to love—wisely and too well?

Suddenly Lula forced herself not to dwell on this aspect of the tragedy, for if she continued thus, she might well begin to join the others—the doctors, the friends who had come to call and gone away shaking their heads, all of those who had given up on Christie. Only she and Garrett had refused to give up. She, because she had always been a tenacious sort, especially when it came to those she loved; Garrett because . . . well, the reasons there were obvious and myriad. Because he was unbelievably strong, refusing to be defeated by the cruelties of fate as only those are who have once nearly suffered defeat and then overcome it, despite great odds. Because he had faith where once he had had none, like a condemned man who suddenly gains a reprieve or a pardon at the last minute, Garrett now believed in miracles, even if they were of one's own making. And, of course, because Garrett's love, that great human restorer, the very fountain of life itself, knew no fetters, no limits, he hoped.

"Christie will come out of it," he had said to Lula the other evening, "because I just can't believe the object of anything so powerful as our love—my love for her, hers for me—can
lose!
Loving is a positive thing, healthy and whole and
having
—not losing!"