The Wildest Heart

“It’s just a typical ranch house, nothing very grand,” Monique said with a deprecating shrug when she showed me through it. But it was comfortable inside, and the guest room where Mark and I would sleep was spacious and airy, with a polished wooden floor that had colorful rugs scattered over it.

I assured Monique that I would be very comfortable here, and she smiled, showing white, slightly pointed teeth. “Oh, but I hope so! For I have already told Mark that you must stay longer than just a few days. I think it is a ridiculous idea, to take you all the way to Boston, traveling all those miles when you are enceinte—only to turn right around and come back. Why should you not spend your honeymoon here? Me, I would not trust that uncle, that fierce Monsieur Shannon. He is—what is the word?—a very unscrupulous man. I think he would not want you to keep what is yours.”

I felt that Monique was the kind of woman who would always speak her mind. She knew of my condition; she knew how short a time Mark and I had been married. And yet she showed no signs of condemning me, but seemed slightly amused instead.

It was growing more and more obvious to me that Mark’s friends knew more about me than I knew of them, in fact, and this was borne out later on that same night, as we sat around the supper table while a smiling Mexican maid cleared away the dishes.

John Kingman, who was a man of few words, was leaning back in his chair puffing on a cigar, a glass of bourbon before him. The rest of us sipped some excellent cognac, which Monique confided had come all the way from France.

“Mark brought it back for us—two cases. Wasn’t that nice of him? All I want from Paris is some really good cognac, I told him. And you see? He kept his promise. Mark always keeps his promises, do you not, mon cher?”

“I did not know you had been to Paris!” I looked from Mark to Monique. “Why, we’ve spoken often of Europe, and never once did he mention…”

“Did he not? Mark, you are a wicked man! Yes, of course he has been to Paris—it was about two years ago, I think, and when he came back—ah, he could talk of nothing but you. Remember I told you that Mark always keeps his promises? This was one that he made then. He told me, ‘Monique, I have seen the woman that I am going to marry someday.’ And he has done so…”

Before I could speak, Mark leaned forward and took my hand. As it had been last night, his face was rather flushed. “I was going to tell you last night, dearest, but—I’m afraid you made me forget everything but yourself.”

His low, intimate tone made me embarrassed as well as angry.

“You spoke of honesty between us!”

“So I did—on both sides, remember? Tonight we will tell each other all our secrets.”

Monique broke into the awkward moment with a bright laugh. “Look at them, John! They are still lovers. And perhaps we should be tactful, you and I, and allow them to go to bed, yes?”

It was all I could do to maintain an air of politeness as we said our good nights. I had been deceived too often, and to think that Mark, of all people, whom I thought the only man I could trust, and had married…

“How could you?” I stormed at him as soon as the door had closed behind us. “All these months, when you pretended to be my friend, encouraged me to confide in you—”

“Rowena!” He caught my shoulders, forcing me to face him. “This is not like you, to be so quick to condemn. I remember that you defended Luke Cord almost to the end, even after he had deceived you in the worst possible way.”

“Oh!” I felt as if he had struck me. “How long will you throw that in my face in order to cover up your own perfidy?”

“Until I have proved to you that he is not worth your regrets! Until you are able to dismiss his memory with a grimace of distaste! Can’t you see that everything I do and have done is all for you, Rowena?” He did not give me a chance to reply, but went on heatedly. “Yes, I saw you in Paris. A glimpse of you at the theater once, with your mother and stepfather. And—other times. I tried to get myself invited to all the balls and intimate parties where you would be invited. I saw your picture in the newspapers, the glorious portrait that was painted of you and now hangs in the Prince D’Orsini’s private collection in Venice. I heard what they called you—‘the marble goddess,’ was it not? And I guessed, no, I knew, even then, that you were not made of cold marble, that underneath that withdrawn and icy look there was a real woman. Warm and passionate and vibrant…”

I tried to twist away from him, but he held me fast.

“You have not explained anything!” I said coldly at last. “Why you deceived me, why you pretended…”

“I did not even recognize you at first, in that ugly disguise! Don’t you remember? And after tha

t—well, you wanted to be left alone. And then, when you showed some slight warmth toward me, I didn’t want to spoil anything, in case you might think me like all the other men you seemed to despise. So I waited. Why do you think I remained so long at the ranch? I waited, Rowena, and we became friends. I began to hope, but I warned myself to go slowly, to be careful. I knew that you had been hurt and disillusioned, that for all your poise and beauty you were frightened of me underneath.”

“This is ridiculous!”

“No—it is not! Admit it, you distrusted men. And then—oh, God, can you imagine my feelings when my uncle told me bluntly that he wanted you, and meant to have you? That he had kissed you, and you had responded? He warned me that you were his property, and after a time I began to feel that this was really so. You quarreled with him, stood up to him, swore you would never marry him, and yet—do you think, loving you as I did, that I could not see how flushed and breathless you seemed after you had been alone with him? I knew he had been kissing you, I had seen that triumphant gleam in his eyes before. I tried to warn you…”

“Yes,” I said in a dull voice. “Yes, I know you did. Just as you tried to warn me about Lucas. But that still does not explain…”

“I am coming to that.” Mark’s voice became serious. “Come here, sit down beside me on the bed, Rowena. No, I will not do more than put my arm around you—yet. But you must listen.”

It sounded almost too simple, the way Mark explained it. He had seen me in Paris and had fallen in love with me. He had tried in vain to get an introduction to me, had haunted my favorite theaters and art galleries. But I had never noticed him.

“Why should you? You moved in another sphere, another plane. Lady Rowena Dangerfield—and I was only a middle-class American, on his Grand Tour in Europe. How could I ever manage to meet you?”

But Mark had, in the end, contrived it. Having found out who I was, it was he who had informed my father of the fact that my grandfather was dead, and I was no longer living in India, but was under the care of my mother and her husband.

“You did that? All that—on the slender chance that I might agree to come to America?”