The Wildest Heart

“Will you always be so cold? There’s flame burning under the iciness of a diamond, Rowena. I’d like to uncover the fire in you!”

I stood passively in his crushing embrace, and watched his eyes search my body greedily. I felt nothing, except for a slight soreness between my thighs. Was that all there was to the act of love between a man and a woman? Love, lust. I suppose the two were inextricable.

“Rowena—Rowena! Now that I’ve discovered you for myself, I’ll not let you go.”

When his mouth had lifted itself from mine I twisted from his grasp and went back to brushing my hair. If I had a thought at that moment it was, strangely, that I hated my mother even more than I despised her husband. This was the man she had left my father for—this man who had so little self-control that he had taken her own daughter by force only moments before, and now proposed to make her his mistress! This same man, who had seemed so arrogant and overbearing at the beginning, but now pleaded with me for warmth and a response to his bestial embraces. He could have overpowered me again by sheer brute strength, but no. He wanted more. He wanted response—the feigned passion of a whore! Was that the only way a woman could dominate a man? How easy it would be to exploit this man. Yes, and to make my mother suffer too! If I wanted to…

“For God’s sake, girl, aren’t you going to say anything to me?” He was pleading again, eyes almost haggard now. “What’s done is done. I would have preferred it to have happened differently, but I had had too much to drink at the club, and when Tom came storming in—”

For the first time since Sir Edgar had entered my room, a spark of anger pierced my defensive shell of reserve. “Don’t speak to

me of Tom Wilkinson! To think you sent him to me, knowing I’d be alone—to think you considered him good enough for me!”

“No, girl, no! But how was I to know! By God, I think I’d kill that young pup if I thought he’d touched you! Didn’t I just say I’d make it all up to you, for everything? Listen—” his voice became feverish, his hands touched my shoulders again as if he could not help himself—“listen, you shall have everything, anything you want, do you hear? Fine, fashionable clothes, jewels—would you like your own horse to ride in the park? A small carriage? I’m a rich man.”

“And how will you explain your sudden generosity to—your wife?”

Deliberately I hesitated before my choice of a word, and he flushed dully.

“Don’t turn hard, girl. Fanny—well, you don’t know her, do you? She—she’s not the same. Always those headaches, dragging me off to dull dinners.”

“Don’t you mean that my mother is no longer young—and I am?”

He could find nothing to say to refute my blunt statement, and I moved away from him.

“Please, I’m rather tired now. I think I would like a bath.”

I was trying my power over him already, and we both knew it.

He looked at me, at my body, and I saw his shoulders sag.

“I’ll—I’ll send Jenks in to you. She won’t talk—owes me too much. I’ll have her move you to the blue room. It’s larger, and has a view of the park. And—we’ll talk tomorrow?”

“Perhaps,” I said coldly. And for the moment, that was the end of it. He left my room and I was alone again. Automatically, I took my one, ugly flannel dressing gown from the wardrobe and draped it around myself.

“Vanity, Rowena! It was your own vanity that caused this to happen.”

Why did I suddenly imagine I could hear my grandfather’s voice? Deliberately I shut it out. He had educated my mind, but taught me nothing about the world as it was. I had realized, in the space of an afternoon, that I was ignorant in many other ways. All of my education had not taught me to get along with other human beings, any more than my birth and breeding had protected me. For the first time, I realized that I was completely alone, with only myself to depend upon. And yet, somehow I would survive—and I would use any methods I could think of to do so.

Two

How can one describe the passing of time? Light and shade—patterns seen through a kaleidoscope—

I blossomed forth, like a butterfly from a cocoon, taking, as one of my many later admirers said, all London by storm. I’m sure he exaggerated, although my sudden transformation from quiet, dowdy obscurity to flamboyant debutante was bound to give rise to some comment.

I shall never know what transpired between Sir Edgar and my mother—if anything did—but almost overnight I found myself no longer a retiring, unwanted poor relation. Suddenly I was the petted, spoiled daughter of the house, a pampered creature whose every wish must be indulged.

I was presented to Her Majesty. Like the rest of that year’s debutantes, I was dressed in virginal white; my dark hair crowned with a diamond tiara. I was seen at all the fashionable functions with my doting parents.

My mother and I were still virtual strangers, but what did it matter? In public she was proud of me; in private, we had nothing to say to each other. And Edgar Cardon, as he promised, continued to be generous.

We traveled in Europe, and my knowledge of languages proved an asset, instead of the liability it had once been considered. An Italian prince dubbed me “the marble goddess” when I rejected his attempts at seduction, and the name followed me back to London. I was an acknowledged beauty now; I, who had always considered myself plain, who had been called ugly and frumpish. And when the prime minister said I had a mind as scintillatingly clear as one of the diamonds I constantly wore, my position in society became secure. The Earl of Beaconsfield had also added, in private, that I was as cold and as hard as the stones I seemed to admire, but this comment was never noised abroad. I put him off by protesting that he was a married man, but he was also a supremely intelligent individual, and my evasions did not fool him.

“I wonder if you are capable of loving?” he once asked me when we were alone. “I could almost understand your rejection of me if you were in love with poor Edgar Cardon, but I know that you’re not. You are too intelligent to be a lady, and too much of a lady to be a little whore at heart. Have you ever asked yourself what you are searching for, Rowena?”

My eyes met his. His honesty appealed to me. “Why should I have to search for anything?” I said lightly. “If I’m not entirely satisfied with my way of life, I’m not too discontented either. I manage to fill up my days.”

“With a man like Edgar Cardon? What do you have in common with him? I’ll be frank. I’ve known my share of beautiful women, but in your case, it was your intelligence that appealed to me. You’re wasting yourself.”