Читаем Forever Amber полностью

To Amber it seemed that time passed more slowly than ever before. She spent hours with Susanna, helping her learn to walk, building block castles and playing with her, singing her the dozens of nursery rhymes she remembered from her own childhood. She adored her—but she could not build a whole life around her. She longed for that great exciting world to which she had bought and paid her admission and which she might now enter proudly by the front door, not sneak into like a culprit through some back passageway. She was glad that Radclyffe was not interested in the gay life at the Palace, for that would leave her all the more free to enjoy it herself.

She wanted nothing so much as to get away from him. She felt as though he was casting some evil spell over her, for though she did not actually see him often he seemed to hang forever at her shoulder, to lurk in her mind—sombre and dreaded. Alone in the house as she was and with few diversions, everything that was said or done by either of them assumed a magnified importance. She mulled over each word spoken, each glance exchanged, every action, worrying it like a dog with a bone.

Once, out of boredom, she ventured into his laboratory.

She tried the door, found it open, and went in quietly, so as not to disturb him. Great stacks of books and manuscripts, recently sent down from Lime Park, were piled on the floor. There were several skulls, hundreds of jars and bottles, oil-lamps, pottery vessels of every shape and size—all the paraphernalia of alchemy. He was engaged, she knew, in the “Great Work”—a tedious, complicated process of seven years which had as its goal the discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone—a search that was occupying some of the best minds of the age.

As she entered he stood before a table, his back to her, carefully measuring a yellow powder. She said nothing but walked toward him, her eyes going curiously over the loaded shelves and tables. All at once he gave a start and the bottle dropped from his hands.

Amber jumped backward to avoid spotting her gown. “Oh! I’m sorry.”

“What are you doing in here!”

Her anger flared quickly. “I just came in to look! Is there any harm in that?”

He relaxed, smoothing the scowl from his face. “Madame, there are several places where women do not belong—under any circumstances at all. A laboratory is one of them. Pray don’t interrupt me again. I’ve spent too many years and too much money on this project to have it ruined now by a woman’s blundering.”

After alchemy his greatest interest was his library, where he spent many hours of each day. For most of his life he had been collecting rare books and manuscripts, which he kept all in precise order, listing each one carefully and with a full account of everything that pertained to it. But his interest in books was more than mere pleasure in possession, in the look and feel of fine leather and old paper. He read them as well. There were Greek plays; Cicero’s letters and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius; Plutarch and Dante; Spanish plays; French philosophers and scientists—all in their original languages.

He did not forbid Amber the library, but it was not until they had been married for several weeks that she went into it. She had now become so desperate for entertainment that she was finally willing to read a book. But she had not realized that he was there and when she saw him, sitting beside the fireplace with a pen in his hand and a great volume lying open on the writing-table, she hesitated a moment, then started out again. He glanced up, saw her, and to her surprise got politely to his feet, smiling.

“Pray come in, madame. I see no reason why a woman may not enter a library—even though she isn’t likely to find much in it to her taste. Or are you that freak of man and nature—a learned female?”

His mouth, as he spoke the last sentence, turned ironically down. In common with most men—no matter what their own intellectual interests and acquirements might be—he considered education for women absurd and even amusing. Amber ignored the jibe; it was not a subject on which she could be easily offended.

“I thought I might find something to pass the time with. Have you got any plays written in English?”

“Several. What do you prefer—Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakespeare?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve acted ’em all.” She knew that he did not like any reference to her acting and mentioned it frequently to annoy him. So far he had refused the bait.

But now he looked at her with obvious displeasure. “Madame, I had hoped your own sense of shame would prevent you from making any further reference to so unfortunate an episode in your life. Pray, let me hear no more about it.”

“Why not? I’m not ashamed of it!”

“I am.”

“It didn’t keep you from marrying me!”