Читаем Forever Amber полностью

The hallway was in a turmoil. The broad center staircase was covered with men and furniture—one carrying a small Italian couch, another bundled in ornate golden drapes, someone with a Botticelli painting on his head, another balancing one velvet-seated Spanish chair on each shoulder. Amber approached a liveried footman who carried one end of a gigantic carved chest.

“Where’s your master?” He ignored her and would have gone on by without answering but she grabbed him roughly by the arm, angry enough to have slapped his face. “Answer me, you varlet! Where’s your master?”

He gave her a surprised look, without recognition, as though he had heard her for the first time. Radclyffe had probably been working them for hours. He gave a jerk of his head. “Upstairs, I think. In his closet.”

Amber ran up the stairs, dodging around servants and furniture, with Big John close at her heels. But now her legs were weak and trembling. She felt her heart begin to pound. She swallowed but her throat was dry. Nevertheless her exhaustion was suddenly and miraculously gone.

They hurried down the gallery to his Lordship’s apartments. Two men were just coming out, each of them bearing a tall stack of books, and as they went she signalled Big John to turn the lock. “Don’t come till I call you,” she said softly, and then walked swiftly across the parlour toward the bedchamber.

It was almost empty—but for the bed, too big and unwieldy to be moved—and she went on, toward the laboratory. Her heart seemed to have filled all her chest now and it hammered so that she expected it suddenly to burst. He was there, going hastily through the drawers of a table and stuffing his pockets with papers. For once his clothes were in disarray—he must have ridden horseback to have arrived so soon—but even so he presented a strangely elegant appearance. His back was turned to her.

“My lord!” Amber’s voice rang out like the tolling of a bell.

He started a little and glanced around, but he did not recognize her and returned instantly to his work. “What do you want? Go away, lad, I’m busy. Carry some furniture down to the carts.”

“My lord!” she repeated. “Look again. You’ll see I’m no lad.”

For a moment he paused and then, very slowly and cautiously, he turned. There was a single candle burning on the table beside him, but the glare of the flames lighted the room brilliantly. Outside the fire roared like unceasing thunder; the constant booming of explosions rattled the windows, and burnt buildings toppled to the ground, crashing one after another.

“Is it you?” he asked at last, very softly.

“Yes, it’s me. And alive—no ghost, my lord. Philip’s dead—but I’m not.”

The incredulity on his face shifted at last to a kind of horror, and suddenly Amber’s fears were gone. She felt powerful and strong and filled with a loathing that brought out everything cruel and fierce and wild in her.

With an insolent lift of her chin she started toward him, walking slowly, and the riding whip in her right hand flicked nervously against her leg. He stared at her, his eyes straight and steady, but the muscles around his mouth twitched ever so slightly. “My son’s dead,” he repeated slowly, fully realizing for the first time what he had done. “He’s dead—and you’re not.” He looked sick and beaten and older than ever before, all confidence gone. The murder of his son had completed the ruin of his life.

“So you finally found out about us,” taunted Amber as she stood before him, one hand on her hip, the other still flicking the riding-crop.

He smiled, a faint and reflective smile, cold, contemptuous, and strangely sensual. Slowly he began to answer. “Yes. Many weeks ago. I watched you together—there in the summer-house—thirteen times in all. I watched what you did and I listened to what you said, and I got a great deal of pleasure from thinking how you would die—one day, when you least expected it—”

“Did you!” snapped Amber, her voice taut and hard, and the whip flickered back and forth, swift as a snake. “But I didn’t die—and I’m not going to either—”

Her eyes flared to a wild blaze. Suddenly she raised the whip and lashed it across his face with all the force in her body. He jerked backward, one hand going up involuntarily, but the first blow had left a thin red welt from his left temple to the bridge of his nose. Her teeth clenched and her face contorted with murderous fury; she struck at him again and again, so blind now with rage she could scarcely see. Suddenly he grabbed hold of the candlestick and lunged toward her, heaving all his weight behind it. She moved swiftly aside and as she dodged gave a shrill scream.

The candlestick struck her shoulder and glanced off. She saw his face loom close and his hand seized the whip. They began to struggle and just as Amber brought up her knee to jab him in the groin Big John’s cudgel came down on his skull. Radclyffe began to double. Amber jerked the whip out of his hand and lashed at his face again and again, no longer fully conscious of what she was doing.