“How strange that you should have married his sister.”
“Not strange at all. It was a suitable marriage in some ways. The girl was of good family and brought a good dowry with her.”
“And you took the dowry and cared nothing for her.”
“I had no reason to care for her.”
“She was your wife.”
He grasped me firmly and pressing me backwards kissed me firmly on the mouth.
“There is only one wife for me,” he said. “Praise God I have her.”
“I wish you had told me that she was a Landor.”
“Why? It meant nothing to me that you once had a fancy for that lily-livered boy.”
“You malign Fennimore. He was not that. He is brave and dedicated to his work. He has ideals.”
“Much good will they do him.”
“There speaks the buccaneer.”
“This is a buccaneer’s world.”
“It is changing,” I said. “Trade will take the place of war and those who persist in making war will suffer and those who live peacefully will prosper.”
“By God,” he said, “you repeat your lessons well. I will have no more of Fennimore Landor in this house. You are well rid of him. I do not wish to hear his name mentioned again.”
“Why? Does your conscience fret you?”
“My conscience?”
“Yes, for what you did to the Landors.”
“You are mad, wife. What I did to the Landors was to marry their daughter. She died in childbirth as others have done before her.”
“But she was sick and ill and you persisted that she should give you a son.”
“God’s teeth, girl! Has a man no right to a son?”
“Not if he must kill his wife to get one.”
There was a brief silence; the ghostly shadows had crept farther into the room. For a few seconds—and a few only—Colum was shaken. I knew then that he had ignored Melanie’s pleas, that he had forced her as in the beginning he had forced me. His will was law in Castle Paling and if he had to trample over the heart and body of any who stood in his way he would do so.
In those seconds I seemed to have a vision of the future. It was as though Melanie was warning me. He wants you now. You are important to him, but for how long?
Just that and no more. The moment passed.
He was laughing. “I can see someone has been talking too much.”
“Nay,” I said quickly, fearing his wrath for the servants. “I have worked this out for myself. This was the room where she suffered. This was the room where she died. Do you not feel that she is still here?”
“You have gone mad,” he said. “She lies in her grave. She is no more here than your pretty Fennimore is.”
“She is dead, Colum, and the dead sometimes return.”
“Nonsense,” he shouted. “Nonsense.”
I saw his eyes look about that room. It would be full of memories for him. His step in the corridor, Melanie shrinking in her curtained bed; the onslaught that she feared—cruel and crude to such a defenceless creature, asking herself what she feared most, his intrusion into her privacy or that pregnancy which kept him away and could bring death closer.
I was full of pity for her.
“You are morbid,” he accused.
“I feel drawn towards this room.”
“On this night of all nights!”
“Yes, because it is this night.”
“You want me to stand in this room and ask forgiveness of her. For what? Because I asked that she should perform her duties as a wife? Because I wanted sons? In God’s name, for what other reason should I have married a silly simpering girl who brought me no pleasure?”
“You made a mistake in marrying her. We have to abide by mistakes.”
“Nay,” he said. “If we take a false step we right ourselves and go in another direction. Enough of this.” There was a satanic gleam in his eyes. He pulled me towards the bed.
I said: “No, Colum, please, not here …”
But he would not heed me. He said: “Yes. Yes. I say yes and by God and all his angels I will have my way.”
Later we supped in that room where we had on the first night I came to Castle Paling.
When I was in my chair he came round to me and in his hands was a solid chain set with diamonds on which hung a locket of rubies and diamonds. He put it about my neck.
“There,” he said, “it becomes you well. It is my gift to you, my love. It is my thanks for my son and for giving me that which I have looked for in my wife.”
I touched his hands and looked up at him. I had been shocked by what had happened in the Red Room. He had meant to lay the ghost, to superimpose on my fantastic imaginings a memory of our own. I think he was right in believing that I would not want to go there for some time. I would not want to think of us—which I must—on the bed on which Melanie had died.
How characteristic of him thus to defy the enemy which in this case was the memory of Melanie.
“You like this trinket?” he asked me.
“It is beautiful.”
He kissed me then with that tenderness which always moved me deeply.
“You are glad of that night? Glad a brigand saw you in an inn and decided that you should be his.”
“Yes, glad.”
I took his hand and kissed it.
“I will tell you something,” he said. “There was never a woman who pleased me as you do.”
“I hope I shall always do so.”
He laughed lightly. “You must make sure that you do.”
“I shall grow old,” I said, “but so will you.”
“Women grow old before men.”
“You are ten years older than I am.”
“Ten years is nothing … for a man. It is only women who must fight off age.”
“You are arrogant.”
“I admit it.”
“Vain.”
“True.”
“Selfish and sometimes cruel.”
“I confess my guilt.”
“And you expect me to love such a man?”
“Expect and demand,” he answered.
“How could I?”
“I will tell you how. You love me because you know you must. You know my nature. It is all you say it is. But know this too. I am a man who will have my way and if I say this woman is to love me, then she has no help for it. She must do so.”
“You imagine you are a god and all other men are nothing beside you.”
“I know it to be so,” he said.
“You believe that all you have to do is command a woman to love you and she must needs do so.”
“That is true too,” he said. “You began by hating me. Now you are as eager for me as I for you. Is that not proof?”
I smiled across the table at him.
“I think it must be,” I said.
I was happy that night. It was only in the morning that I thought again of Melanie and wondered whether in the beginning when they had first married she had supped with him in that room and whether he had spoken of love to her.
Had it been only when she failed to give him what he wanted that he grew to despise her?
Into my mind had crept an uneasy thought: What if you should cease to please him?
Christmas came. My little Connell was four months old, lusty as ever, doing, as Jennet said, all the things a boy ought to do. Showing temper, showing interest, growing plump and healthy. I wouldn’t allow him to be swaddled and Colum agreed with me. If he had not I should have prepared to fight against him on this point. I couldn’t bear to think of my baby bound up in swaddling clothes for weeks. “I want his legs to grow long so that he will be as tall as his father,” I said.
We loved to see him kick and his legs were straight as a pine tree.
Such celebrations we had that Christmas. My mother and father came to spend the time with us. With them came Damask, Penn and Romilly. Edwina would not travel because her son being only a few months older than mine was too young, she said. So she and Carlos stayed at Trewynd. Jacko was with the family of his betrothed at Plymouth but he did ride over with the party to see Jennet and stayed with us a night and then went back to Plymouth.