Читаем Forever Amber полностью

They met, usually, just twice a day—at dinner, and in bed. Conversation at dinner was polite and arid, carried on chiefly for the benefit of the servants, but in bed they did not talk at all. The Earl could not, in any real sense, make love to her, for he was impotent and apparently had been for some time. More than that, he disliked her, frankly and contemptuously —even while she roused in him conflicting emotions of desire and some wild yearning toward the past which he could never explain. Yet he longed violently for complete physical possession—a longing at which he caught night after night, but never grasped, and it drove him down a hundred strange pathways of lust and helpless rage.

From the first morning they were enemies, but it was not until several days had gone by that mutual antipathy flared into open conflict. It was over a question of money.

He presented to her a neatly-written note addressed to Shadrac Newbold: “Request to pay to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of Radclyffe, or bearer, the sum of eighteen thousand pound,” and asked her to sign it, for the money was still in her name, though he possessed the marriage-contract which put control of her entire fortune, except for ten thousand pounds, into his hands.

They were standing beside a small writing-table. As he gave her the paper he took a quill, dipped it in the ink-well and extended it to her. She glanced first at the note and then, with a little gasp of amazement, raised her head to look at him.

“Eighteen thousand pound!” she cried angrily. “My portion won’t last long at this rate!”

“I beg your pardon, madame, but I believe that I am as well aware as you of the evanescent quality of money, and I have no more wish to dissipate your inheritance than you have to see me do so. This eighteen thousand pound is to pay my debts which, as I told you, have been accumulating for twenty-five years.”

He spoke with the air of one who makes a reasonable explanation of a difficult problem to a child who is not very clever, and Amber gave him a furious glare. For a moment longer she hesitated, her mind stabbing here and there for a way out. But at last she snatched away the pen, thrust it into the ink-well and with a few swift strokes scrawled her name across the sheet, making specks of ink fly as she did so. Then she threw down the pen, left him and walked to the window where she stood staring down into the alley below—scarcely seeing two women fish-vendors who were bellowing curses and slapping at each other with huge flounders.

In a few moments she heard the door close behind him. Suddenly she whirled, grabbed up a small Chinese vase and threw it violently across the room. “Lightning blast him!” she cried. “Stinking old devil!”

Nan rushed forward as though she would rescue the pieces. “Oh, Lord, mam! Your Ladyship!” she corrected. “He’ll be stark staring mad when he finds what you’ve done! He was mighty fond of that vase!”

“Yes! Well, I was mighty fond of that eighteen thousand pound, too! The varlet! I wish it had been his head! Lord! What a miserable wretch is a husband!” Impatiently she glanced around, looking for some diversion. “Where’s Tansy?”

“His Lordship told me not to allow ’im in the room when you’re in your undress.”

“Oh, he did, did he? We’ll see about that!” She rushed across the room and flung open the door, shouting. “Tansy! Tansy, where are you?”

For a moment she got no answer. Then, from behind a massive carved chest appeared his turban and shortly the little fellow’s black and shining face. He blinked his eyes sleepily, and as he opened his mouth to yawn half his face seemed to disappear. “Yes’m?” he drawled.

“What the devil are you doing back there?”

“Sleepin’, mam.”

“What’s the matter with your own cushion in here?”

“I ain’ allowed no more in there, Mis’ Amber.”

“Who said so!”

“His Lordship done say so, mam.”

“Well, his Lordship doesn’t know what he’s talking about! You come in here, and from now on do as I say—not as he says! D’ye hear?”

“Yes’m.”

It was just after noon when Radclyffe returned, entering the room with his usual quietness, to find Amber sitting cross-legged on the floor playing at “in and in” with Tansy and Nan Britton. There were piles of coins before each of them and the women were laughing delightedly over Tansy’s droll antics. Amber saw the Earl come in but ignored him, until he was standing directly beside her. Then Tansy looked slowly around, his black eyes rolling in their sockets, and Nan became apprehensively still. Amber gave him a careless glance, shaking the dice back and forth in her hand. Though it made her angry, her heart was beating a little harder—but she had told Nan he might as well find out once and for all that she was not to be governed.

“Well, m’lord? I hope your creditors are happy now.”

“Truly, madame,” said Radclyffe slowly, “you surprise me.”

“Do I?” She rolled the four dice out onto the floor, watching the numbers as they turned up.

“Are you naïve—or are you wanton?”