Red Magic (27 page)

"I am done with mistresses, and that
was not a love letter."

"You visited her on your last
trip."

"I did not. Her very talented and very
improvident husband was ill. So ill he died just after I got back from Vienna. When she wrote of
her difficulties, I had to help."

"Did I not swear at our parting to
continue your protector?" Cat quoted the words that had burnt themselves
into her memory, throwing them like a handful of rocks.

"The word is tainted, but I am no
longer her lover. I wanted to give the widow entree to a banker as soon as
possible. I will even show you what she wrote to me—"

Cat waved her hands in the negative,
clenched her red brows. The very idea of adding to the nearly unbearable pain!

"My sorry past has left me with
obligations, obligations I will not, must not shirk. This lady and her two
small children, the youngest of whom, I confess, may be mine, are in danger of
debtor's prison."

"The Saint Anne's
boy?"

"What?" His eyes flashed rage, a
rage which he mastered. He brought his powerful hands to his face and rubbed
fiercely.

"A child conceived while you were
writing Wili those penitent love letters on your way to fight the Turks!"
Caterina accused him. "By Saint Brigitte, Christoph von Hagen," she
cried, squeezing her locket, "I will not close my eyes the way you
expected Wili to."

"It was my last, crowning folly, the
jewel in my crown. Nevertheless, without my help, this lady will end in
debtor's prison, along with her children. Consider it, Caterina. Or are you
like all the other so-called virtuous people I've ever met? Not a drop of
real charity in you?" Feeling pity, yet fearing his maneuvering, Caterina
began to sob. She didn't want to, but it was impossible to stop. Her head was
pounding as if someone had driven a stake into it.

"I'm sorry that you have found this
out because I knew exactly how you'd see it.
As did
Josefa."

"I've been fool enough to love you,
even when I know very well that as soon as a woman does that, you are
gone."

His handsome face darkened. "So, you
believe that I have spent the last three months toying with you, like Furst
does with those wretched mice he catches?"

Caterina, tears flowing like a river,
nodded.

"Grosse Gott! Justice miscarries when
she settles her scores with me by breaking your heart."

Cat, feeling nothing but stony disbelief,
replied, "You've made a fool of me, just as you did to poor Wili. Go to
your Viennese woman and leave me alone."

"In a few days, Lady Wife, I will. I
want some time to visit with my boys and I've got to get to my regiment, or pay
a stiff fine for being late. Beyond that, I've a responsibility to my soldiers.
We're going to fight the Turks and we must have each other's confidence before we
get there."

He leaned against the bedpost and stared at
her.

"What a mess! And most of it's my
fault as usual, but don't you see that you've a part in it too? God, Caterina,
how I wish you could find it in your heart to trust me just a little. Since the
day the Wili died, I've tried to do right."

"Go away. You're making my head ache.
I want Elsa." Memories of his love making, of the helpless surrender she'd
made of her heart and body, filled her mind. How shameful it seemed now, the
memory of being rocked, over and over again, night after night, to that
glorious annihilation. His pursuit of amorous variety, how he'd had her, always
naked, in all those ways, his whispered teasing about her 'long, long filly's
legs'...!

There was a pain in her chest that didn't
seem to have anything to do with her injuries. It felt as if her guts had been
pulled out and were being tossed into a fire before her eyes.

* * *

On the night following, Caterina awoke
crying, crying with a new pain, one that swiftly overcame all the others. At
the first sound both Elsa and Christoph were beside her. After some terrible
cramps, the worst she'd ever felt in her life, a gush of blood filled
Caterina's maidenly bed.

"Well, if you were thinking that I'd
lose interest as soon as you'd produced an heir," Christoph observed
miserably, after the servants had gone out with the bloody sheets and clothes,
"the time has been postponed."

"It wasn't a miscarriage!" Cat
shrieked at him. She felt like an animal harried to death, the quarry at the
end of a hunt. "I was never carrying anything of yours! It's just another
of your lies.
To make me feel worse than I already do!"

Her husband arose from the bed beside her,
his handsome face filled with despair.

"If you really think that, then God
help us both."

* * *

Christoph stood by Cat's bed, dressed in
his uniform. He looked anguished, but every bit as masterful and lordly as he
had on the day on which they'd married.

"When you get up, Cat, you'll find
that the house has been almost emptied, "from kitchen to the door keepers.
Everyone who appears to have more of an allegiance to the past than to me has
been dismissed. I've no time to find more staff and, frankly, my confidence in
Walter has been shaken. Stocke will be sharing responsibility with him now, and
if anyone new is hired, he will be the one to do it. We have a new woman to
cook, one from Heldenruhe. Ekkehard will be leaving with me, to begin his
apprenticeship in my Cousin Wagensperg's kitchens in Vienna. Fraulein Josefa will go to Heldenruhe
tonight with her sister and from there to Passau.
I have told them, and I think they understand, that her enmity has robbed me of
the ability to do anything more for her. I cannot predict who she will next
harm. I'm taking horses, so there will be fewer grooms. I shall sell the
trotters and some of the mares and yearlings in Vienna."

"Your beautiful
trotters?"
This surprised Cat more than
anything else he'd said. The removal of staff she'd been hearing about from
Elsa.

"I'm a bit short of cash this spring, little
wife. And four are an unnecessary bachelor's indulgence. I had intended to take
the Andalusian along with Brandy, but now he's not fit. I'll get another war
horse from my father on the way."

She felt sorry, knowing how proud he'd been
of his matched pairs, so she stretched out her hand. He accepted it, tenderly
kissed her fingers.

"It may be an entire year before I
return. If, when you are better, you still think you ought to return to your
parents, you are at liberty to do so. Herr Goran, whom I've left here to care
for you, will accompany you."

Surprised, she opened her mouth to speak,
but he reached down and rested the gentle tips of his fingers against her lips.
"This is quite a long speech, so let me finish. I don't think that running
home is wise, but do whatever it is you think you must. As long as you remain
here at Heldenberg, you are the lady of the house and my wife. Perhaps you will
decide to wait until I return. If you do, then we will try once again to regain
what I hoped we'd found."

He sat down on the edge of the bed beside
her. His eyes were sad, almost bereft of any but the darkest color.

"Now, Caterina, I intend to lecture.
It seems to me that just as much as a man owes his wife fidelity and all his
tenderness, she owes him trust. If you can't find it in your heart to trust me
and believe in my love a little, I think it would be best if you did return to
your father." He gently tilted her chin and brushed her lips very softly
with his.

"Aufweidersehen,
little wild cat.
Apply yourself to your lessons.
I've told Herr Walter that everything is to be open to you, particularly the
accounts. If he is uncooperative, tell Herr Stocke. Please write to me often,
tell me about Heldenberg. If worse comes to worst and the Turks finish me, you
shall at least end as an educated widow."

"Oh, Christoph, don't say—"

"Perhaps these are words spoken to the
wind," he interrupted, "but let me repeat one last time that I love
you, Caterina Maria Brigitte."

Caterina couldn't believe it when the door
closed behind him. Would he ever return? And would she be there to meet him?

* * *

Lying in her bed, head aching, surveying
parts of herself where various swellings, cuts and bruises changed color daily,
Caterina felt as isolated as if she were marooned. Elsa was poor company, all
her thoughts on Ekkehard, now gone to Vienna.
Not three days after Christoph and his entourage of soldiers, servants and
horses left, another huge spring storm swept the mountain, blanketing the land
in white and cutting them off from the outside world again. The manor seemed
eerie now, with its closed doors and silent passages. When she was up and
around, the similar emptiness in the great barn and at the barracks surprised
her as well. So many people and animals were gone.

Cat's headache resolved itself in a few
weeks, but there was a month of aches and pains, as all the various stiffnesses
and swellings subsided and abraded skin repaired itself. Herr Stocke
immediately set Cat piles of work which she embraced without argument. Buried under
dozens of arithmetic problems or deep in the study of some ancient back and
forth wrangle between warring Electorates, Caterina could, for a little while,
forget her heartache.

She did discover a new boon companion.
Christoph's cat, Furst, made a sudden decision that Caterina was his. When Elsa
and the new cook's girl carried up dinner in the evening, their parade was
headed by the black tom, his bushy long tail waving like a battle flag. Furst
spent much of each lonely evening on Caterina's lap. Most nights she fell
asleep with her hand resting on the warm, fluffy belly which he, flopped in the
bedclothes beside her, presented for rubbing.

Chapter Sixteen

Green began to crown the forest. Tall
drifts in the lee of the pines sagged, crystallized, sending streams down the
slopes. Later than in her Donau valley home, so that Cat was simply longing for
it, came spring. Looking out the window at night, she could see the mares
standing in the horse pasture, great bellies silhouetted by the moonlight. Among
them was her Star.

Christoph wrote to her faithfully. He told
her of Vienna,
of the mustering of the troops. Later
came
tales of
battle in the lands of the Croats and Slovenes, of skirmishes on the Hungarian
plains. There was little news about the state of his heart. Caterina fretted
that the letters which Elsa received from her Ekkehard, although short and
badly spelled, were a thousand times more passionate. She tried to concentrate
upon her studies, but when she couldn't endure sitting for another moment she
went to the stables where a friend—no, an admirer—waited.

All through that lonely spring Cat's
pleasure in the company of Herr Rossmann had grown. Now a white smile flashed
whenever Cat came into view. Star too had grown to trust him while her mistress
had been sick. Now, even if the mare was loose in pasture, she'd come when
Rossmann whistled. Tossing her five point blaze like a high spirited filly,
she'd cheerfully allow Rossmann everything. It was almost funny to remember
that once Caterina had thought the horsemaster threatening and taciturn.

These days they had plenty to talk about.
Mistress and man compared remedies for worms, bot fly and injured pasterns. He
explained how he'd worked his cure upon Brandy, talked about training and
breeding, and lamented the loss of so many fine horses from the Graf's stables.
They rode out together and he showed her field and forest in another way than
Christoph had. Rossmann's interest was in herbs peculiar to the mountain. He
even paid her the high compliment of showing her secret places where delicious
morels grew.

Suddenly, one day, the thought that
Rossmann was actually rather handsome chased through her mind. His dark eyes
were full of a high intelligence, and his slender, limber frame was strong and
erect.
Even his flowing black moustache, which had once
seemed so sinister, appeared as fitting and manly, part of what she had come to
appreciate as "eastern style."

It was obvious that he admired her, too.
Their uneasy awareness of the boundaries that lay between mistress and man,
Christian and Orthodox, Slav and German, sounded other notes of uneasy
excitement. While Caterina was currying great bellied Star, Rossmann often
leaned over the wall and visited. It was during one of those chats that she
told him about the day when one of her father's stallions had taken a run at
her.

"My friends were scared and I should
have been," Cat explained. "He came charging across the pasture at
us. He was a big gray Wurttemburg and he just looked so beautiful."
Rossmann nodded, apparently imagining the scene.

"He came right up to us and began
rearing, smashing his hooves down close to me, threatening and trying to get us
to run, but I told my friends not to move a muscle and I stretched out my hand.
Finally, he stopped his battle dance and lowered his head so that I could touch
him. After, he snorted, whirled around and went high tailing away.
Understanding horses is the one natural born skill I have." She paused to
tug a burr from Star's creamy tail.