Читаем Forever Amber полностью

And while Corinna hesitated the flame burned closer to the pin, melting the wax, and slowly it began to droop. Amber was breathing faster, her nostrils flared a little and her muscles held taut. There! It’s sliding out! I’ve got it! I’ve won!

“Fifty pounds!” called a masculine voice, as the pin fell from the candle onto the table.

The auctioneer was holding the cloth in his hands, grinning. “Sold, for fifty pound, to my Lord Carlton.”

For a moment Amber sat, unable to move, while every other head in the room turned curiously to watch him making his way through the crowd. Then, as though her neck operated on a creaky hinge, Amber forced herself to turn her head, and just as she did so she looked up into his face. His green eyes met hers for a moment and there was a faint smile on his mouth; he nodded at her, and went on. She saw other smiles too, all around her, mocking jeering faces that seemed to close in upon her, to swim and dance all about her head.

Oh, my God! she thought wretchedly. Why did he do that to me? Why did he do it?

Lord Carlton now stood beside his wife and she was getting to her feet; her waiting-woman had gone to take the piece of cloth and she held it in her arms, triumphantly. Chairs scraped and moved, gentlemen stepped aside as Bruce and Corinna walked out. The room was murmurous as a bee-hive, and not every smirk was covered with a polite fan.

“Lord!” said a nearby baroness. “How’ll we shift if it should become the fashion for a man to prefer his wife to his whore?”

Amber sat there, feeling as though she were imprisoned where she could neither see nor breathe, and that if she did not somehow break her way out she would explode. Lord and Lady Carlton were gone now and the auctioneer was measuring down another inch on his candle, but no one paid him any attention.

“What d’ye know!” cried Middleton, ruffling her fan and showing her teeth in a simulated smile. “Aren’t men the most provoking creatures?”

All of a sudden Amber ground her heel on the other woman’s toe. Middleton let out a yelp of pain and reached one hand down to massage her injured foot. Threateningly she glared back up at Amber, but Amber ignored her. She was sipping her tea, eyes cast into the bowl, and she did not so much as give a surreptitious glance around the room to see who was watching her, for she knew that they all were.

But later at home she was so sick that she vomited and went to bed and wished she would die. She contemplated suicide—or at least some spectacular try at suicide to rouse his sympathy and bring him back to her. But she was afraid that even that might not succeed. Something in the expression of his eyes, seen for just that moment as he passed, had convinced her at last that he was done with her. She knew—but she would not accept it.

Somehow, somehow, she told herself, I can win him back again. I know I can. I’ve got to! If only I can talk to him again I can make him see how foolish this is—

But now he did not even answer her notes. The messengers she sent came back empty-handed. She tried to meet him herself. Once she dressed in boy’s clothes and went to Almsbury House. She waited more than an hour in the rain at the door he was supposed to leave by, but did not see him. She had her informers posted everywhere, to let her know the moment he entered the Palace grounds, but apparently he never came to Whitehall any more. At last she sent him a challenge to a duel —the one infallible means she knew to make him see her again.

“For some months, sir,” it read, “I have suffered the embarrassment of being your cuckold. This has damaged the repute of my family, as well as of myself, and to repair the honour of my house I do hereby challenge your person to mine, by whatever arms you may choose, and do request your attendance at five of the clock tomorrow morning on the twenty-eighth day of May in Tothill Fields where the three great oaks stand by the river. Pray, sir, do me the favour of keeping our rendezvous a secret, and come to it unattended. Your humble servant, sir, Gerald, Duke of Ravenspur.”

Amber thought it had the ring of authenticity and sent Nan to an amanuensis to have it copied in a hand like Gerald’s, for though she knew it was unlikely Bruce had ever seen his writing, she intended to take no chances. If this failed—But it couldn’t fail! He had to come—no gentleman dared refuse a cartel.

But Nan protested. “If your husband had been going to fight ’im at all, he wouldn’t have waited till now.”

Amber would hear no objections. “Why not? Look how long it took the Earl of Shrewsbury to challenge Buckingham!”