Forever Amber Read online

  "Oh—well—to tell you truly, sir. I don't think my Uncle Matt would want me to go—"

  And as she stood here beside him, wishing that he would make the decision for her, she saw—not ten yards away— Agnes and Lisbeth Morton and Gartrude Shakerly. All three of them were staring at her with their mouths wide open— amazed, indignant, shocked, furious with jealousy. Amber's eyes met her cousin's for one instant, she gave an involuntary gasp of horror, and then swiftly looked the other way and tried to pretend she had not seen them. Nervously her fingers began to pick at the brim of her bongrace.

  "Uds Lud, your Lordship!" she muttered in an excited undertone. "There's my cousin! She's sure to run and tell my aunt! Let's go over this way—"

  She did not see the smile on Carlton's face for already she had started off, making her way through the crowd, and without glancing around at the three girls he followed her. Amber looked back just once to make sure that Agnes was not at their heels and then she gave him the brightest smile she could muster. But she was scared now. Agnes would rush to find

  Sarah or Matt, and after that she would be sought out by some member of the family and summoned back to safety. They must get away, out of sight—for she was determined to have this hour or two, whatever discomfort it caused her later.

  Now she said hastily: "Here's the churchyard—let's go in and make a wish at the well."

  He stopped then and she stopped too, looking up at him with a kind of apprehensive defiance. "My dear," he said, "I think you're only going to get yourself into trouble. Evidently your uncle's a very moral gentleman and I'm sure he wouldn't care to have his niece in the company of a Cavalier. Perhaps you're too young to know it, but the Puritans and the Cavaliers don't trust each other—particularly where it concerns female relatives."

  There was the same lazy sound in his voice, the same look of mild amusement on his face that had so strangely affected her the night before. For she was able to sense that this idle indifference but thinly concealed a temper at once relentless, fierce, and perhaps a little cruel. Without being able to recognize her own desires she was vaguely conscious of wanting to break through that veneer of urbanity, to experience herself something of the stormy power which was there just under the surface, not dormant but carefully leashed.

  She answered him recklessly, for she was beginning to feel more sure of herself. "I don't care about my uncle— My aunt always believes me—Leave me alone for that, your Lordship. Please, sir, I want to make a wish."

  He shrugged his shoulders and they started on, crossed the road and went through the ivy-grown lych-gate to where two small wells stood three feet or so apart. Amber dropped to her knees between them, plunging one hand in each until the cold water covered her wrists, and then closing her eyes she made a silent wish.

  I wish for him to fall in love with me.

  For a moment she remained still, concentrating intensely, and then lifting each cupped hand she drank the water. He reached out one hand and raised her to her feet.

  "I suppose you've wished for all the world," he said. "How long before you'll get it?"

  "In a year—if I believe it—but never, if I don't."

  "But of course you do?"

  "All my other wishes came true. Don't you want to wish too?"

  "A year isn't long enough for most of my wishes."

  "Not long enough? Gemini! I'd thought a year must be long enough for anything!"

  "When you're seventeen, it is."

  She began looking around her then, partly because she could no longer meet the steady stare of his green-grey eyes, but also because she was searching for some place where they might go. The churchyard was too public. Other people were likely to wander that way at any time, and every man or woman or child seemed a threat to her happiness. She felt that they were all in league to call her away, to make her leave him and go back to the dry sterile protection of her uncle and aunt.

  At the side of the church was a garden and beyond it the meadow which separated Heathstone from Bluebell Wood. Why, that was the place of course! In the wood it was cool and dark and there were many little nooks where no one would ever see them—she knew several, remembered from the Fairs of the past three or four years. Now she started off that way, hoping that he would think they had merely chanced upon it.

  They went through the garden, climbed the stile, and set out across the meadow.

  The grass there was sown thickly with buttercups and field daisies and wild yellow irises. Underfoot the ground was spongy with contained water and their feet sank a little at every step. Farther ahead near the river was an orange wash of colour where the marigolds grew, and as they came closer they could see the tall green reeds standing in the water. On the banks were pussywillow trees and across the stream at the edge of the forest was a cluster of aspen, their leaves glistening like sequins in the sun.

  "I'd almost forgotten," he said, "how beautiful England is in the spring."

  "How long since you left it?"

  "Almost sixteen years. My mother and I went abroad after my father was killed at Marston Moor."

  "Sixteen years abroad!" she cried incredulously. "Lud, how'd you shift?"

  He looked down at her, smiling with a kind of tenderness. "It wasn't what any of us would have chosen, but the choice wasn't ours. And for my part I've got no complaint to make."

  "You didn't like it over there?" she demanded, shocked and almost indignant at this blasphemy.

  Now they were crossing the swift-flowing river on a narrow shaky footbridge built of logs; below them the fish darted and dragon-flies zoomed low over the water and among the lily-pads that grew in a quiet pool. On the other side they entered the forest and took a wandering faint little path which led among the trees and ferns and flowering wild hyacinth. It was cool in there and still, fragrant with the smell of flowers and rotting leaves.

  "I suppose it's petty treason for an Englishman to admit he likes another country. But I liked several of them—Italy and France and Spain. But America most of all."

  "America! Why, that's across the ocean!" That was, in fact, all she knew about America.

  "A long way across," he admitted.

  "Was the King there?"

  "No. I sailed once on a privateering expedition with his Majesty's cousin, Prince Rupert, and another time on a merchant-fleet."

  She was entranced. To have seen such faraway places—to have even sailed across the ocean! It was incredible as a fairytale. Heathstone was as far from home as she had ever been, and that just twice a year, for the spring and autumn fairs. While the only person in her acquaintance who had been to London, twenty-five miles south-west of Marygreen, was the cobbler.

  "What a fine thing it must be to see the great world!" she heaved a sigh. "Have you been to London, too?"

  "Just twice since I've been old enough to remember. I was there ten years ago and then a couple of months after Cromwell died. But I didn't stay long either time."

  They had stopped now and he gave a glance up at the sky, through the trees, as though to see how much time was left. Amber, watching him, was suddenly struck with panic. Now he was going—out again into the great world with its bustle and noise and excitement—and she must stay here. She had a terrible new feeling of loneliness, as if she stood in some solitary corner at a party where she was the only stranger. Those places he had seen, she would never see; those fine things he had done, she would never do. But worst of all she would never see him again.

  "It's not time to go yet!"

  "No. I have a while longer."

  Amber dropped onto her knees in the grass, her mouth pouting, eyes rebellious—and after a moment he sat down facing her. For several seconds she continued staring sulkily, mulling over her dismal future, and then swiftly her eyes went to his. He was watching her, steadily, carefully. She stared back at him, her heart pounding, and there began to steal over her a slow weakness and languor, so consuming that even her eyes felt heavy. Every part of her was tormented with lo
nging for him. And yet she was half-scared, uncertain, and reticent, filled with a sense of dread almost greater than her desire.

  At last his arm reached out, went around her waist, and drew her slowly toward him; Amber tipping her head to meet his mouth, slid both her arms about him.

  The restraint he had shown thus far now vanished swiftly, giving way to a passion that was savage, violent, ruthlessly selfish. Amber, inexperienced but not innocent, returned his kisses eagerly. Spurred by the caressing of his mouth and hands, her desire mounted apace with his, and though at first she had heard, somewhere far back in her mind, Sarah calling out to her, warning her, the sound and the image grew fainter, dissolved, and was gone.

  But when he forced her back onto the earth she gave a quick movement of protest and a little cry—this was as far as her knowledge went Something mysterious, almost terrible, must lie beyond. Her hands pushed at his chest and she gave a frightened little sob, twisting her face away from his. Her fear now was irrational, intense, almost hysterical.

  "No!" she cried. "Let me go!"

  She saw his face above her, and his eyes had become pure glittering green. Amber, crying, half-mad with passion and terror, suddenly let herself relax.

  With slow reluctance Amber became again conscious of the surrounding world, and of both of them as separate individuals. She drew a deep luxurious sigh, her eyes still closed— she felt that she could not have moved so much as a finger.

  After a long while he drew away from her and sat up, forearms resting on his knees, a long blade of grass between his teeth, staring ahead. His tanned face was wet with sweat and he mopped across it with the black-velvet sleeve of his doublet. Amber lay perfectly still beside him, eyes closed and one arm flung over her forehead. She was warm and drowsy, marvellously content, and glad with every fibre of her being that it had happened.

  It seemed that until this moment she had been only half alive.

  Aware of his eyes on her she turned her head slightly and gave him a lazy smile. She wanted to say that she loved him but did not quite dare, even now. She wished he would say that he loved her, but he only bent and kissed her, very gently.

  "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I didn't expect to find you a virgin."

  "I'm glad I was."

  Was that all he was going to say? She waited, watching him, beginning to feel uncertain and a little afraid. He looked again as he had when she first saw him—she could never tell now by his expression or manner how close they had been. She was surprised and hurt, for what had happened should have changed him as much as it had her. Nothing should ever be the same again, for either of them.

  At last he got up, squinting overhead at the sun. "They'll be waiting for me. We want to get into London before nightfall." He reached down a hand to help her and she jumped up quickly, shaking out her hair, smoothing her blouse, touching her earrings to make sure she had not lost them.

  "Lud, we mustn't be late!"

  Knocking at the dust on his hat, he gave her a glance of quick astonishment, then set it back on his head. He scowled, as though he had got more than he had bargained for.

  At his look, Amber's smile and excitement went suddenly dead. "Don't you want me to go?" She was almost ready to cry.

  "My dear, your aunt and uncle would never approve."

  "What do I care! I want to go with you! I hate Marygreen! I never want to see it again! Oh, please, your Lordship. Let me go with you." Marygreen and her life there had suddenly become intolerable. He had crystallized all the restlessness, the thirst and longing for a broader, brighter life which had been working within her, half unrealized, ever since she had first talked to the cobbler many years ago.

  "London's no place for an unmarried girl without money or acquaintance," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, which even Amber knew meant that he did not care to be troubled with her. And then he added, perhaps because he was sorry to hurt her, "I won't be there long. And what would you do when I go? It wouldn't be easy to come back here—I know well enough what an English village thinks of such escapades. And in London there aren't many means of livelihood open to a woman. No, my dear, I think you'd better stay here."

  All of a sudden, to his surprise as well as her own, she burst into tears. "I won't stay here! I won't! I can't stay here now! How d'ye think I'm to explain to my Uncle Matt where I've been these two hours—when a hundred people I know saw us leave the fair grounds!"

  A look of annoyance crossed his face, but she did not see it. "I told you that would happen," he reminded her. "But even if he's angry it'll be better for you to go back and—"

  She interrupted him. "I'm not going back! I won't live here any more, d'ye hear? And if you won't take me with you— then I'll go alone!" She stopped suddenly and stood looking up at him, angry and defiant, but pleading, too. "Oh, please— your Lordship. Take me along."

  They stood and stared at each other, but at last his scowl faded away and he smiled. "Very well, you little minx, I'll take you. But I won't marry you when we get there—and don't forget, whatever happens, that I told you so."

  She heard only the first part of what he said, for the last seemed of no immediate importance. "Oh, your Lordship! Can I go! I won't be any trouble to you, I swear it!"

  "I don't know about that," he said slowly. "I think you'll be aplenty."

  It was mid-afternoon when they rode into London over Whitechapel Road, passing the many small villages which hung on the edge of the city and which despite their nearness to the capital differed in no external aspect from Heathstone or Marygreen. In the open fields cattle grazed, wrenching lazily at the grass, and cottagers' wives had spread their wash to dry on the bushes. As they rode along they were recognized for returning Royalists and were cheered wildly. Little boys ran along beside them and tried to touch their boots, women leant from their windows, men stopped in the streets to take off their hats and shout.

  "Welcome home!"

  "Long live the King!"

  "A health to his Majesty!"

  The walled City was a pot-pourri of the centuries, old and ugly, stinking and full of rottenness, but full of colour too and picturesqueness and a decayed sort of beauty. On all sides it was surrounded with a wreath of laystalls, piled refuse carted that far and left, overgrown with stinking-orage. The streets were narrow, some of them paved with cobblestones but most of them not, and down the center or along the sides ran open sewage kennels. Posts strung out at intervals served to separate the carriage-way from the narrow space left to pedestrians. And across the streets leaned the houses, each story overhanging the one beneath so as to shut out light and air almost completely from the tightest of the alleys.

  Church-spires dominated the skyline, for there were more than a hundred within the walls and the sound of their bells was the ceaseless passionately beautiful music of London. Creaking signs swung overhead painted with golden lambs, blue boars, red lions, and there were a number of bright new ones bearing the Stuart coat-of-arms or the profile of a swarthy black-haired man with a crown on his head. In the country it had been sunny and almost warm but here the fog hung heavily, thickened with the smoke from the fires of the soap-boilers and lime-burners, and there was a penetrating chill in the air.

  The streets were crowded: Vendors strolled along crying their wares in an age-old sing-song which was not intended to be understood, and a housewife could make almost all necessary purchases at her own doorstep. Porters carried staggering loads on their backs and swore loudly at whoever interrupted their progress. Apprentices hung in the shop doorways bawling their recommendations, not hesitating to grab a customer by the sleeve and urge him inside.

  There were ballad-singers and beggars and cripples, satin-suited young fops and ladies of quality in black-velvet masks, sober merchants and ragged waifs, an occasional liveried footman going ahead to make way for the sedan-chair of some baronet or countess. Most of the traffic was on foot but some travelled in hackney-coaches which plied for public hire, in chairs, or on horseback, but when t
he traffic snarled, as it often did, these were liable to be stalled for many minutes at a time.

  It took no sharp eye to see at a glance that the Londoner was a different breed from the country Englishman. He was arrogant with the knowledge of his power, for he was the kingdom and he knew it. He was noisy and quarrelsome, ready to start a murderous battle over which man got the walk nearest the wall. He had supported Parliament eighteen years before but now he prepared joyously for the return of his legitimate sovereign, drinking his health in the streets, swearing that he had always loved the Stuarts. He hated a Frenchman for his speech and his manners, his dress and his religion, and would pelt him with refuse or blow the froth from a mug of ale into his face before proposing a toast to his damnation. But he hated a Dutchman or any other foreigner almost as fiercely, for to him London was the world, and a man worth less for living out of it.

  London—stinking dirty noisy brawling colourful—was the heart of England, and its citizens ruled the nation.

  Amber felt that she had come home and she fell in love with it, as she had with Lord Carlton, at first sight. The intense violent energy and aliveness found a response in her strongest and deepest emotions. This city was a challenge, a provocation, daring everything—promising even more. She felt instinctively, as a good Londoner should, that now she had seen all there was to see. No other place on earth could stand in comparison.

  The group of horsemen parted company at Bishopsgate, each going his separate way, and Bruce and Amber went on alone with two of the servingmen. They rode down Gracious Street and, at the sign of the Royal Saracen, turned and went through a great archway into the courtyard of the inn. The building enclosed it on every side and galleries ran all the way around each of the four stories. Bruce helped her to dismount and they went in. The host was nowhere about and after a few moments Bruce asked her to wait while he went out to find him.