Weeks went by very quickly this way.
Ye gods! thought Amber dismally. I’ll be twenty-one in March! I’ll most likely be too old to enjoy it when I finally get that damned money.
Christmas was a welcome diversion to her. The house swarmed with children, more of them than ever: Deborah who lived in the country had come to spend the holidays, bringing with her a husband and six children. Alice and Anne, though they both lived in London, followed the Dangerfield tradition and came home with their families. William returned from abroad and George came down from Oxford. Only Jemima preferred to stay at her husband’s home, but even she paid them a visit almost every day, with Joseph always beside her—full of pride for his pretty wife and so happy at the prospect of parenthood he must tell everyone he saw the wonderful news. And Jemima seemed, if not in love with Joseph, at least tolerant of his adoration—which she had not been before; pregnancy had given her a kind of serene contentment. Her rebellion against the manners and morals of her class was over, and she was beginning to accept and settle into her place in that life.
Laurel and cypress and red-berried holly decorated every room and filled them with a spicy winter fragrance. An enormous silver bowl of hot-spiced wine, garlanded with ivy and ribbons and floating roast apples, stood ever ready in the entrance hall. And there was food in all the glorious ancient tradition: plum-porridge and mince-meat pies, roast suckling pig, a boar’s head with gilded tusks, fat geese and capons and pheasants roasted to a crusty golden brown. Every dinner was a feast, and whatever was left was distributed to the poor who crowded at the back gates in vast numbers, baskets over their arms, for the Dangerfield generosity was well-known.
Gambling for money was traditionally permitted in all but the strictest households at Christmas-time, and from early morning till late at night cards were shuffled and dice rolled and silver coins clinked merrily across the tables. The children played hot-cockles and blind-man’s-buff and hunt-the-slipper, shouting and laughing and chasing each other from one room to another, from garret to basement. And for more than two weeks a stream of guests poured continuously through the house.
Amber gave Samuel a heart-shaped miniature of herself (fully clothed) set in a frame of pearls and rubies and diamonds. She gave gifts almost as expensive to every other member of the family, and her generosity to the servants convinced them that she was the best-natured woman in the world. She received as much as she gave, not because the family liked her any better than before, but to keep up appearances for their father and for outsiders. Amber knew this but she did not care, for nothing could have dislodged her now that he thought she carried his child. He gave her a beautiful little gilt coach, upholstered in padded scarlet velvet trimmed with swags of gold rope and numerous tassels, and six fine black horses to draw it. She was not, however, allowed to ride in it but must go everywhere in a sedan-chair—Samuel would take no chances with her health or the baby’s.
Twelfth Night marked the end of the celebrations. It was late in the evening that Samuel suffered another severe stroke, his first since the previous July.
Dr. de Forest, who was sent for immediately, asked Amber in private if Samuel had obeyed his earlier advice and she reluctantly admitted that for some time past he had not. But she defended herself, insisting that she had tried to persuade him but that he had refused to listen and had said it was ridiculous to think a man of sixty-one too old for love, and swore he felt more vigorous than he had in years.
“I don’t know what else I can do, Dr. de Forest,” she finished, giving the responsibility back to him.
“Then, madame,” he said gravely, “I doubt that your husband will live out the year.”
Amber turned about wearily and left the room. If she was ever to get rich Samuel must die, and yet she shrank from the thought of being his murderess, even indirectly. She had developed a genuine, if superficial, love for the handsome, kind and generous-spirited old man she had tricked into marriage.
In the anteroom to the bedchamber she came upon Lettice and Sam, and Lettice was in her brother’s arms, crying mournfully. “Oh, Sam! If only it had happened any night but this one! Twelfth Night—that means he’ll die before the year is out, I know it does!” Twelfth Night was the night of prophecy.
Sam patted her shoulders and talked to her quietly. “You mustn’t think that, Lettice. It’s only a foolish superstition. Don’t you remember that last year Aunt Ellen had the ague on Twelfth Day? And she’s been merry as a grig all year.” He caught sight of Amber, pausing in the doorway, but Lettice did not.
“Oh, but it’s different with Dad! It’s that terrible woman! She’s killing him!”
Sam tried to shush her beneath his breath, as Amber came on into the room. Lettice spun around, stared at her for a moment as though undecided whether to apologize or speak her mind. And then suddenly she cried out:
“Yes, you’re the one I meant! It’s all your fault! He’s been worse since you came!”
“Hush, Lettice!” whispered Sam.
“I won’t hush! He’s my father and I love him and we’re going to see him die before his time because this brazen creature makes him think he’s five-and-twenty again!” Her eyes swept over Amber with loathing and contempt; Samuel’s announcement of his wife’s pregnancy had been a serious shock to her, as though it were the final proof of her father’s infidelity to their dead mother. “What kind of woman are you? Have you no heart in you at all? To hurry an old man into his grave so that you can inherit his money!”
“Lettice—” pleaded Sam.
Amber’s own sense of guilt stopped her tongue. She had no stomach for a quarrel with his daughter when Samuel lay in the room beyond, perhaps dying. She answered with unwonted gentleness.
“That isn’t true, Lettice. There’s a great difference in our ages, I know. But I’ve tried to make him happy, and I think I have. He was sick before I came, you know that.”
Lettice, avoiding her eyes, made a gesture with one hand. Nothing could ever make her like this woman whom she distrusted for a hundred reasons, but she could still try to show her at least a surface respect for her father’s sake. “I’m sorry. I said too much. I’m half distracted with worry.”
Amber walked by, toward the bedroom, and as she passed gave Lettice’s hand a quick grasp with her own. “I am too, Lettice.” Lettice looked at her swiftly, a questioning puzzled look, but she could not help herself; the woman’s smallest gesture would always seem false-hearted to her.
Samuel refused to make his annual trip to Tunbridge Wells that January because his wife’s advanced pregnancy would not allow her to accompany him. But he did rest a great deal. More and more he stayed in his own apartments with her, while the eldest sons took over the business. She read to him and sang songs and played her guitar, and with gaiety and affection tried to soothe her own conscience.
It was customary for men with financial responsibilities to check over and settle their accounts at the end of the year, but because of his stroke Samuel postponed doing so until early in February. And then he worked on them for several days. He had his wealth in goldsmiths’ bills, stock in the East India Company—of which he was one of the directors—assignments upon rents, mortgages, shares in privateering fleets and other similar ventures, cargoes in Cadiz and Lisbon and Venice, jewels and gold-bullion and cash.
“Why don’t you let Sam and Bob do that?” Amber asked him one day, as she sat on the floor playing a game of cat’s-cradle with Tansy.