Remembrance

But how? I knew nothing about getting rid of curses. All I knew was how to tell stories and entertain people. Now if this were one of my stories, I thought, smiling. If I were writing this I’d—

I sat bolt upright in bed. “That’s it! Stories are my talent and I must use that God-given gift to figure out what needs to be done. I must—”

I was out of bed in a flash. Just like Scarlett, I got my strength from the land. In New York, when I needed to think I went to Central Park and walked. Walked for miles. Now I must dress and go to the garden and figure out what my heroine—I—must do to rid herself of this curse.

Four hours later my legs were tired, but I had a plot, no, a plan. All I needed was a little gunpowder, some cosmetics, hair dye, and a whole lot of luck.

As I walked back to the house, I wasn’t wishing, I was praying.

43

Adam Tavistock, Lord de Grey, r

ode the horse as though he were part of it, his long legs gripping the sweating sides of the animal as it leaped over hedges and ditches. Mud spattered him; brambles tore at his clothes and tree branches swiped at his face. But he didn’t care as he urged his horse on, faster and farther. If it were possible, he wanted to escape himself. He had a feeling that what he would like to do is ride so fast and hard that he left his very soul behind.

But where would he go? he wondered, for no matter how hard he rode, he couldn’t stop his thoughts. Where was there to go? Into the waiting and willing arms of Fiona? Sometimes when he looked at her he was enraptured with her beauty and he wanted her very much, but most of the time he nearly fell asleep in her presence.

She’s so beautiful she doesn’t need a sense of humor, he thought as his horse sailed over a tall hedge. She’d never had to make a man laugh; never had to entertain anyone. Just the sheer presence of her was enough to satisfy most people. All she had to do was sit and that was enough. No one seemed to care that she never listened. But then she never had anything to say, so why should she learn to listen?

Yet Tavistock was planning to marry her. Why? he asked himself, knowing that the answer was that all he wanted was to make Catherine jealous. Catherine seemed to hate Fiona, truly hate her. When Tavistock had first seen the beautiful Fiona he hadn’t paid much attention to her, only noted that she was extraordinarily pretty, but he had never thought of possessing her. He hadn’t thought of making her his own any more than he would have taken a painting off the wall of a friend’s house.

What had made him interested in Fiona was Catherine’s animosity, her instant hatred of the woman. And for some odd reason, Catherine seemed to think that Tavistock was passionately interested in the divine Lady Fiona. Catherine’s unfounded jealousy had made Tavistock take much more notice of the lovely Fiona than he would have otherwise.

The horse leaped at a stream with steep banks, lost its footing on the other side and almost fell, but Tavistock’s sheer willpower and his expert handling of the reins kept the animal on its feet.

He loved Catherine, loved her with all his heart. Four and a half years ago he had seen her at a garden party at his aunt’s house. He had taken one look into those blue eyes, one look at that white-blonde hair and he was lost. Never since had he cared about any woman other than her.

But things had gone wrong on their wedding night. Very wrong. Very, very wrong. As much as he wanted her, he couldn’t make her his. Catherine had been so innocent that she’d not known there was anything wrong. She had loved the way he’d caressed her naked body, loved the way he held her. After hours of touching and kissing, she had not understood why her husband had slammed out of the room in a rage. He knew that Catherine felt that she had done something wrong, but she had no idea what.

The next morning he’d told himself that his inability had been due to wanting her so much, loving her so much that he was in pain. And it was due to the unfamiliarity of her. Perhaps if they knew each other better he could relax around her.

So he had spent time with her, traveled with her, laughed with her, confided in her, but all that did was make him need her, make him love her more than he had when he’d first married her.

He wanted her so much. He ached with wanting her. Everything about her enticed him: the way she walked, how she spoke, what she spoke of. The way she held a teacup made sweat roll down the back of his collar.

After a year of living near her and being unable to consummate the marriage, he knew he had to get away from her, so he began to travel, began to stay away from her, hoping that not seeing her every day would free him from what he felt for her.

And there were other women. He had to prove to himself that he was still a man. He left Catherine in the country and spent his time in London, drinking and seducing women. Never did he have any problem with any of them. Only Catherine made him feel less than a man.

Somewhere during the three years of their marriage—if it could be called such—he’d started to tell himself that their problem was her fault, not his. There was obviously nothing wrong with him, so it must be her.

His Uncle Hubert had been concerned about Tavistock spending so much time away from Catherine. “Women get into mischief when they have no one to occupy their time,” he’d said. “You should give her a few children to take care of. Keep her busy in bed.” He had not understood Tavistock’s angry reply and subsequent storming out of the house.

When Tavistock had seen the way Catherine reacted to the lovely Fiona, Catherine’s jealousy had touched something deep within him. He didn’t like himself much for it, but he wanted to hurt Catherine, just as she was innocently hurting him. He’d begun to mention Fiona at every opportunity. He told Catherine of Fiona’s perfume, of her clothes. He suggested that Catherine ask Fiona how she made her hair so soft. With every word he spoke, he saw Catherine grow more and more angry, until, at last, her anger matched Tavistock’s.

But everything backfired when Catherine wrote those letters. He knew very well that she’d never had sexual relations with any man, not him or anyone else. She was too closely looked after for that. Whenever Tavistock returned from a trip, he called her maid to him and asked for a full report on every minute of Catherine’s doings. Her greatest pleasures seemed to be in patronizing opera singers and buying pretty little ornaments from some Russian émigré.

Tavistock knew very well that she had written those letters to make him think she was desirable. She’d never say so, since she was as proud as any man, but he knew what she was after. Catherine wanted him to realize that other men did like her and want her, just as he seemed to want Fiona.

But Tavistock had some pride of his own, and he couldn’t very well explain to Catherine that the problem was him and not her.

Everything would have blown over if it hadn’t been for Aya, his old nanny. She had always been very possessive of her charge. When Tavistock was a child she used to pinch him to make him cry before she presented him for the obligatory 6 P.M. visit to his parents. It didn’t take too many appointments before the visits were suspended; his parents did not want to be bothered with a screaming, runny-nosed brat in the drawing room every evening. When his parents instructed the nanny to bring the child back when he was old enough to have learned some manners, Aya had what she wanted. Her sweet little Tavey was hers alone.

For all that Tavistock could fool other people into thinking that his little wife bored him too much to remain at home, Aya knew the truth. She knew that Tavistock was obsessed with Catherine. From the moment he had first seen Catherine, he had thought of no one else. Only she was on his mind. Aya knew that Catherine had stolen Tavistock from her in a way that only deep love could, and this made her hate Catherine.

Tavistock pretended that he didn’t know how Catherine’s letters became known to the public, but he did. In a naively clumsy way, Catherine had “accidentally” left the letters lying about so he could find them. Truthfully, he had enjoyed reading them, as he always enjoyed her stories. Catherine could go to the most boring, ordinary function in the world and come away with truly hilarious stories. When they were first married he would sit through a tea party with some old crone pouring tea and talking endlessly about her garden. It would be all he could do to keep from nodding off. But later, when he and Catherine were driving home, she would entertain him with her accounts of all sorts of subtle things that had happened during the tea party. Catherine told of big-nosed, bony daughters who were dying of love for him. Her “proof” was the way the girl had handed Tavistock a teacup and the way she had asked if he wanted milk or lemon. When Catherine described the gathering to him, Tavistock always felt that he had attended a different party than she had. Where had he been when all this happened? He came to look forward to what Catherine told him had happened much more than what did happen.

But after the first year of their marriage, when Tavistock’s anger had gradually increased, Catherine had stopped telling her stories. She’d said, “When I am unhappy, there are no stories in my head.” After that he’d started traveling and staying away from her.