Joan Wolf (10 page)

And once again I am nine years old, and the thunder is crashing outside my bedroom window, and I am afraid.

* * * *

The fear of thunderstorms started with the death of my father. I do not remember ever worrying about storms until then. It was a fear that grew worse when we moved to Weston, where the storms were fiercer because of its proximity to the Channel.

The sick, frightened feeling would begin with the first sound of distant rumbling. Afternoon storms, when I was with other people, were just bearable. It was the nighttime storms, when I was all alone, that were the worst.

The July day had been sultry, and I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of thunder. Then lightning flashed, so brightly that for one brief moment it illuminated the whole of my nursery bedroom. I saw quite clearly the big walnut dresser, the pictures of horses I had hung on the walls, the shelf that held my favorite books. The crash of thunder that followed the lightning was deafening.

I pulled the covers up over my head and huddled under them, quivering all over inside my cotton nightdress.

The next lightning flash was so brilliant that it even brightened the dark under the covers, and I whimpered.

“Annabelle.”

He had to repeat my name twice before I heard him.

“Don’t be afraid, Annabelle,” he said. “It will be over soon.”

I peered cautiously from beneath my covers. I saw him clearly in the next lightning flash, standing next to my bed, his hair ruffled from sleep, his blue eyes concerned.

“I d-don’t like thunders-storms, Stephen,” I said.

“I know. But you’re quite safe in the house, Annabelle. Nothing can hurt you in here.”

I nodded.

He could see from my face that I didn’t believe him.

A crack of thunder made me jump. I stared at him imploringly.

“Would you like me to stay with you until it’s over?” Stephen asked.

“Yes!”

“Well, move over,” Stephen said.

I wiggled to the far side of the feather mattress, and Stephen climbed in beside me. He had been sleeping in only his drawers, because of the heat, and his upper body gleamed as white as a candle in the next flash of lightning. He appropriated one of my pillows, turned his back to me, and curled up, and in two minutes he was asleep.

I put my hand on his warm bare back.

The thunder crashed. The lightning blazed. And safety and comfort radiated all through me from that thin, bony, boy’s back. Before the storm was finished, I too had fallen asleep.

The next time there was a thunderstorm at night, I didn’t bother to wait for Stephen to come to me. I took my pillow and went along to the bedroom next to mine.

He was stretched out on his stomach in the middle of the bed, deeply asleep. I had to shake him before his eyes opened.

“It’s thundering, Stephen,” I said. “Can I stay with you until it’s over?”

He blinked. “Um,” he said.

The thunder rumbled. It was coming closer.

Stephen rolled over to the far side of the bed, and I crawled in.

In five minutes we both were asleep.

Until I was sixteen years old, Stephen and I were all alone in the nursery, except for Miss Archer, my governess. My bedroom was directly next to Stephen’s at the end of the passage. Gerald’s old room lay between mine and the playroom, and the room next to Stephen’s on the passage was the bathroom. The governess’s bedroom was farther down the corridor, between the playroom and the schoolroom.

In later years I would wonder about my mother’s lack of perception in allowing Stephen and me to share the nursery wing for all those years. Of course, Mama had her own plans. She had determined from the first that I should marry Gerald.

It had simply never crossed her mind that I would be fool enough to want the younger son.

Now, fearless of thunderstorms at the age of twenty-three, I lay awake in the dark, remembering, until the storm had passed through the valley. In my heart there was such a confusion of emotions. Once I had loved Stephen beyond all measure, and he had failed me. I blamed him bitterly for that.

I would probably never forgive him. But when I thought of what we once had been, my heart bled and bled and bled. I wanted those times to return. And they never could.

* * * *

For as long as I could remember, breakfast was put out in the dining room from seven-thirty to ten, and people could wander in whenever they chose. So when I walked in the following morning at eight I was surprised to find the entire family eating together around the uncovered mahogany table. I filled my coffee cup, took a muffin from the sideboard, and appropriated the empty chair next to Nell.

Stephen looked up from his grilled kidneys and announced that he was leaving later in the morning to pay a visit to his uncle Francis in Kent for a few days.

Nell was dismayed.

I was relieved.

Aunt Fanny approved. “It is right that you should go,” she said. “Mr. Putnam is your godfather and he has always been very fond of you, Stephen dear. He will be anxious to see you again.”

“Thornhill is a nice little property,” Uncle Adam said. “You will inherit it one day, Stephen. It is only right that you show an interest in the place.”

I might mention here that Stephen’s expectations were better than those of most younger sons. His mother had left him fifty thousand pounds, and his mother’s brother, Francis Putnam, was a childless widower who had made Stephen his heir.

Stephen said quietly to Adam, “Uncle Francis wrote to me faithfully every month during the five years I was in Jamaica. I owe him a great deal.”

“I did not mean to suggest that you did not care for your uncle,” Adam said stiffly.

“I know that, sir,” said Stephen with a fleeting smile. He lifted his coffee cup.

“How long will you be gone?” I asked.

He looked at me over the rim of the delicate china cup.

He was sitting between Adam and Fanny and directly across from Nell, but when our eyes met it was as if no one else were present in the room.

I felt the treacherous tightening of my stomach muscles. No one in the world had eyes like Stephen’s, so dark and yet so blue.

He lowered the cup. “I don’t know for certain,” he said. “We will be going up to London to meet a few people. I’ll let you know.”

“London?” Aunt Fanny said in surprise. “There is no one in London in August, Stephen. Everyone has left for Brighton or the country.”

“There is an abolitionist meeting that I particularly want to attend,” Stephen said.

Adam put down his fork, having finished his lamb cutlet. “Abolitionist as in antislavery?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said. “Now that the war is over there is talk of the revival of the French slave trade. This is the time to press for the international abolition of slavery, and all the old abolitionist committees are reviving. They are particularly interested in gathering information about the consequences of the British abolition of the slave trade on the slave population of the islands. This is why they are anxious to talk to me.”

“There was a letter in
The Times just
the other day urging the abolitionists’ cause,” Jasper said. “Something about ‘Let the voice of the British nation once declare itself and the African slave trade must universally cease.’“

“It won’t be as easy as that,” Adam said.

“No, it won’t be,” Stephen agreed. “Thomas Clarkson will be going to the congress at Vienna, however, and there is hope that he will be able to exert enough moral pressure to force an international agreement to outlaw the slave trade.”

“You sound quite knowledgeable about all this, Stephen,” Jasper said.

Stephen leaned back in his chair and said quietly, “I have been in touch with Clarkson since my first year in Jamaica.”

There was a little silence as we all digested the implications of that remark.

Then Jasper said, “Look out, world, Stephen has a Cause.”

He was only half joking.

Stephen said, “You would feel the same way I do, Jasper, if you had seen what I have seen.”

Everyone’s attention was focused on Stephen, and for a few brief unnoticed minutes, I allowed myself to gaze at him, too. Contrary to the present masculine fashion, which called for short curls to be worn on the forehead, his brown hair was brushed softly off his brow and behind his ears. My hand remembered the feel of its thick smoothness very clearly, and I closed my fist in my lap so tightly that my nails cut into my palm.

“I saw some pretty dreadful sights in Spain,” Jasper said in a suddenly harsh voice. “But I’m not as selfless as you are, Stephen. All I want out of life now is a little peace for myself.”

We were all silent for a moment, a little startled, I think, by the raw pain that had sounded in Jasper’s voice.

I broke the tableau by pushing back my chair and getting to my feet.

“Annabelle dear, you haven’t eaten your muffin,” Aunt Fanny protested.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Are you going to the stables?” Jasper asked in his normal voice.

“Yes.”

“I’ll go along with you, if you don’t mind.”

I nodded, and Jasper also got to his feet.

“Show him whatever horses you have for sale, Annabelle,” Adam said. “He’ll need at least two for the hunting season.”

“Jasper doesn’t have to
buy
horses from me, Uncle Adam,” I said. “I will be happy to mount him for the season.”

“You are always so generous, my dear,” Adam said. “But I can afford to buy horses for my son.”

Jasper gave his father an odd, searching look.

Adam went on mischievously, “Of course, if you don’t want to sell to him, we can always look elsewhere.”

“If you look elsewhere, you’ll get inferior horses,” I said instantly.

Adam threw back his head and laughed.

I had to smile at him. “You certainly know how to get round me, Uncle Adam.”

“Everyone knows that Weston hunters are the best hunters anywhere,” Adam said comfortably. “I would take it as a compliment if you would sell two of them to Jasper.”

I was pleased at the compliment, which was not wholly flattery. These days I always had more buyers than horses to sell to them. I could afford to be particular about where I placed my horses, and I was.

“You can have them only if you continue to stable them with me,” I said. The Dower House did not have its own stable.

“You drive a hard bargain, my dear,” Adam said.

A footman came into the room with a fresh pot of coffee and another plate of muffins.

“I didn’t know that Annabelle had gone into the horse business,” Stephen said to no one in particular.

Aunt Fanny said, “It is not a business! Annabelle simply finds nice horses, teaches them to hunt, and then sells them to a few friends. I would not call that a business, Stephen.”

The footman exited silently, taking with him an empty silver serving tray.

Stephen’s eyes were on my face. “Do you make money?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He turned to Aunt Fanny. “It certainly sounds like a business to me.”

Aunt Fanny looked distressed. Society did not consider it at all proper for ladies to be “in business.”

The truth was, in recent years I had made quite a lot of money out of my hunters. It was a good, safe feeling to have money that was all one’s own.

Of course, I had also come into a substantial amount of money when Gerald died. That was not a good feeling at all.

“Come along, Jasper,” I said now, turning on my heel to leave the dining room, “and I’ll show you some hunters.”

* * * *

The formal gardens to the south of the house were partitioned by several long walks edged with yew and hornbeam. One of these walks led to the stables; the other led into the wooded, hilly terrain of the Ridge.

A plantation of beeches screened the Weston stables from the view of the house, and Jasper and I walked together between carefully laid out and colorful beds of asters, petunias, phlox, and snapdragons and entered under the shade of the beeches. In the summer, when the trees were in full foliage, it was always a delightful surprise to walk out from beneath their canopy and see the gray stone stable buildings and the acres of fenced paddocks suddenly spread out before one. Merlin and Portia raced ahead of us, crossing the bridge over the stream and heading for the water trough, where they always took a drink.

I had slept later than usual because of the thunderstorm, and Grimes, the head groom, was waiting for me, metaphorically tapping his foot.

“There you are, Miss Annabelle,” he said reprovingly when I passed through the open gate that led into the graveled stableyard.

I would never be anything but “Miss Annabelle” to Grimes. He had taught me to ride, and he took enormous pride (and most of the credit) for my equestrian accomplishments.

He noticed that Jasper was with me and added pleasantly, “Good morning, Captain.”

Grimes had taught Jasper to ride also. The old groom had been delighted when Jasper went into the cavalry and never referred to him as anything but “Captain.”

Jasper returned Grimes’s greeting, and the two men exchanged a few pleasant words about the weather.

A groom passed close to us, carrying two buckets of well water to the stable. He smiled at me as he passed and ducked his head.

“Good morning, Frank,” I said.

“Mornin’, Your Ladyship.”

The storm had cleared the air, and the sky was a uniformly brilliant blue. The sun felt pleasantly warm, not hot and stuffy as it had the day before.

“Captain Grandville is in the market for some hunters, Grimes,” I said, “and I promised Mr. Adam that I would sell him two.”

“Two!” Grimes said. His narrow, weathered face regarded me in some distress. “I don’t think we have two hunters that are not yet spoken for, Miss Annabelle.”

“All of the horses may be spoken for, but none of them are yet sold,” I reminded Grimes. I always waited until cubbing season before I let my horses go. “I think Captain Grandville deserves precedence over my other customers, don’t you, Grimes?”

The old groom grinned.

Jasper said in surprise, “You really
do
have a business.”