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And as if I had summoned him with my mind, that’s when I see him.
Cyrus has come after all. He’s dressed impeccably, scanning the room with one disdainful brow arched. My stomach tightens. Of course he would have heard about the meeting if he’s been in town nosing around about a mill site, but I had held out hope that he wouldn’t have the audacity to show his face after his bungled proposal.
I duck behind two women engrossed in conversation, waiting for Cyrus to move away from the door. He sees Mother, and pasting a disarming smile on his face, bows over her hand, murmuring some comment that’s too low for me to hear. Quick as lightning, I dart into the hall.
I had thought that this night couldn’t get any worse, after Catherine abandoning me and Mr. Barrett’s polite but stilted conversation, but how wrong I was. With heavy feet, I drag myself down to the second floor. I’m in front of Catherine’s door and before I know what I’m doing, I knock. Nothing feels right. I’m restless, unable to settle. I try not to think about Cyrus and Mr. Barrett being in the same room together, of their paths crossing and Cyrus somehow divulging our history. I knock again before Catherine throws the door open and glowers at me, eyes red and puffy.
“I’m not coming up, Lydia, so spare me a lecture about how this night was supposed to be for me.”
“Can I come in?”
She stares at me for a moment, then moves aside. The room is stuffy, the faint smell of sickness filling the air. Damp handkerchiefs cover the bed, and aborted letters, splotchy with ink, litter her desk. She hastily pushes them into a drawer as I sit on the bed. “What do you want?”
“There were too many people up there,” I say. I can’t tell her that my jealousy drove me away, nor that Cyrus is on the prowl for me, with who knows what intentions.
She just stands there, looking at me as if I didn’t say anything.
“John says that Mr. Pierce went back to Boston to attend his mother.” I don’t know why I use his first name, but it just slips out. “Apparently she’s not doing well. That’s why he didn’t come, not because he had some other engagement.” At the very least I can rest her mind on this matter.
“John said that, did he?” Catherine crosses her arms. Her look is all venom. “I wasn’t aware you were calling each other by your Christian names now. Does Cyrus know? Don’t think I didn’t see him here the other week, sniffing around. I swear, Lydia, for a girl who spends so much time in her books, you can be quite the little minx when you put your mind to it. Can we expect a wedding soon? But who will be the groom? So many choices! Perhaps it will be Mr. Pierce when all is said and done!”
She’s pacing up and down, one hand on her stomach, the other fanning herself. Her face is ghastly white and I’ve never seen such malice, such despair in her pretty green eyes before.
“What are you talking about?” I grope for words, I don’t even know where to start. “Mr. Pierce? You don’t think that I—”
“I don’t know what to think with you sometimes!” She leans against the wall, massaging her brow and staring at me accusingly. “Why are you here anyway? Why aren’t you upstairs with your precious John?”
“He’s not mine, you know that.” I burn just saying the words. “What’s this all about? I was willing to put Charles, Boston, all of it behind us and start fresh with you. I thought earlier this evening that we might be friends...why can’t we be friends?”
“Friends?” She laughs, a joyless sound. “We can never be friends.”
Something isn’t right. Her hand is clutching her stomach, and her face is pulled tight with pain.
I move toward her but she shrinks against the wall like a cornered animal. “Catherine? What’s wrong?”
“Do you really want to know what’s wrong? You say that you want to be friends, but if I told you what’s wrong you would be sick, like you and Mother and Father and the whole world is already sick at me. How come I never hear a word about Charles? Why is no one as sick with him as they seem to be with me?”
“The rumors? Catherine, we all know that they weren’t true. No one is sick at you.”
She’s raving, not even looking at me as she paces, talking to the walls, the ceiling. The little goldCnecklace around her neck glints in the lamplight. She compulsively twists the chain round her finger. “Well it doesn’t matter, does it? Soon everyone will know and if you thought we were pariahs now, just wait until I hold the squalling truth in my arms in five months.”
My blood goes cold. “Catherine,” I whisper, afraid that I already know the answer. “What are you talking about?”
She finally stops and levels her gaze at me, as if seeing me for the first time since I came in. “I wonder how you can be so blind, Lydia.” She smooths down the front of her dress, framing the small round of her stomach with her hands. “I’m with child.”
12
I SIT DOWNon the bed, hard. Catherine is laughing or sobbing—I can’t tell which—and my head has gone light and fuzzy.
“Now do you see? Now do you see why Mr. Pierce must come?”
Oh God, I do. The baby needs a father and she needs a husband.
She’s still going on between sobbing gasps, the awful truth cold and obvious in light of her revelation. I’ve been living under a veil, seeing only shapes and movement. Now the veil has fallen away and everything comes into focus. Her moods, her changed figure, her desperate attention to Mr. Pierce, to Mr. Barrett, to anyone.
I try to reassure her, calm her ruffled feathers. “He’s only gone to Boston, he’ll be back. Catherine—”
Her look is so caustic that I let the rest of my words die in my throat. “Please, just stop. I’m not a fool. I know the kind of man August Pierce is, and it’ll take a miracle to get him to the altar. I don’t have long before it’s harder to hide, and then there won’t be any chance for me, for us.”