HEAVEN’S PROMISE
By Alice Duncan
(Writing as Rachel Wilson)
Heaven’s Promise
Copyright © 1998 by Alice Duncan
All rights reserved.
Published 1998 by Berkley Publishing Corporation
Jove Haunting Hearts
Smashwords Edition September 3, 2009
Visit aliceduncan.net
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Dedication
A while back, an old dancing buddy, Art Aratin, sent a letter telling me I should write a book featuring Danilo, the Gypsy King, in honor of Daniel Matousek. Danny was a dancer, too, as well as eh founder and director of Zena, a women’s Balkan chorus based in the Los Angeles area. He was brilliant at what he did, and loved the folk music and dances of Eastern Europe. Art and Danny, this one’s for you.
I hope my Mainiac relatives, descendants of the Homsteads, will forgive me for changing the shape of the Homstead monument. I had to do it, or the poor characters wouldn’t have had anything to sit on. I also rearranged the geography of Palmyra to make it negotiable on foot and gave it a hotel and a saloon.
Prologue
Alone. Immobile. Frozen in time. Nowhere. Emptiness upon emptiness upon emptiness. Abandoned in infernal limbo. Locked in a wretched, voiceless, soundless, soulless void
Oh, my love, where are you? Why did you forsake me? Where are you? Where are you?
No answer. No answer. Would there never be an answer?
Chapter One
Palmyra, Maine, Summer 1895
Susanna Clement sat on a boulder, her elbows resting on the book on her knees, her chin in her hands. She stared at a mossy tombstone, studying the name engraved thereon and moodily mulling over everything the marker represented.
She wasn’t sad exactly, but the knowledge that the headstone marked an empty grave made her insides quiver with the tiniest degree of melancholy. No one knew what had happened; that’s what bothered Susanna. She wanted to unlock the stone’s secrets, to learn what had really transpired all those years ago, to discover why the body that should be resting in that grave wasn’t there.
Maple and elm trees shaded this section of the Spring Hill Cemetery, and a soft breeze blew, tickling the skin on her arms into gooseflesh. She glanced up into the trees and smiled. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through their leaves and dappled the grass at her feet.
Except for a hint of claustrophobia engendered by so much vegetation and civilization, Susanna loved Maine. The landscape was so different from what she was used to. Back home, a person could see just about forever. Nothing stood in the way of her and the distant horizon. She grew up knowing exactly why people used to believe the world was flat. It was easy to imagine a body walking to the edge of the earth and falling off. Here in Maine, a person could see only as far as the next clump of trees or twist in the road.
And green! Susanna had never seen so much green in one place in her life. On the dry, brown, windswept plains of her home, the first anemic shoots of yellowish green rendered everyone nearly hysterical with spring fever. That usually happened in March, although sometimes those faint signs of new life appeared later in the year. The green here in Maine was so brilliant it had hurt her eyes at first.
Her glance slid back to the tombstone, and she sighed. The soulful sound of her exhalation seemed fitting to her as she sat in the graveyard where a hundred years’ worth and more of her ancestors lay buried. All of those other graves, filled as they were with the bones of those who’d been wept over, loved, parted with sadly, made this one empty grave seem especially forlorn to her.
They’d never found the body. Magdalena Bondurant, whose name was carved on the headstone, had simply disappeared one day in her thirtieth year, thus assuring that the end of her life would generate almost as much controversy as the rest of it. Susanna sighed again, and decided she’d best not dent the diary on her lap with her pointy elbows any longer. After all, the book was almost forty years old, and she intended to take extremely good care of it.
Picking it up, she carefully turned to the page she’d marked with an embroidered bookmark. Susanna hadn’t worked the embroidery herself since she had ten thumbs and scorned such delicate work—“woman’s work” people called it. Susanna did not approve of labors being categorized in such a manner.
Her mother had crafted the bookmark for her, however, and Susanna appreciated it. She loved her mother very much, even though Susanna believed her to be much too concerned about the world’s opinion than she ought to be. Her mother hadn’t told Susanna a single solitary thing about Magdalena Bondurant. Everything Susanna knew about her maternal great-aunt she’d gleaned from this one slender volume. She didn’t know much.
“Some things are best forgotten, Susanna,” her mother had said every time Susanna had asked a question.
Easy for her mother to say. How could Susanna forget something she’d never been privileged to know? It was all very exasperating. She considered Great-Aunt Magdalena the most interesting member of the Bondurant family. Her mother considered her a blot on the family history.
Susanna hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Magdalena Bondurant since she discovered the diary in her mother’s cedar chest. She’d been rummaging for edging fabric, and instead had unearthed a mystery. Magdalena Bondurant had, until Susanna found the diary, had been merely a name in the family Bible—a name no one talked about.
The woman fascinated Susanna. She haunted her dreams. Susanna kept rereading the diary, hoping that somewhere in there was the key to understanding the enigma that was her great-aunt.
The work continues, Susanna read from the diary. It was a passage she’d read over and over again these past several days. I feel a grand elation to be allowed a small part in it. The storage facility is ready. I shall not fail. The work is too important for failure.
Now what, Susanna wondered, was the work? And what was the storage facility? Susanna had her suspicions, and they thrilled her. But what had her great-aunt’s part been in it? There were so many things Susanna longed to find out. Living in Artesia, New Mexico Territory, she’d been at a terrible disadvantage since Magdalena Bondurant had lived and, one presumed, died at the other end of the country. “Down east,” as it were.
That’s one of the reasons Susanna had been so happy when her aunt Winnie invited her to spend the summer here in Palmyra. Palmyra had been Magdalena’s home when she wasn’t touring with her theatrical company, and it was in Palmyra, Susanna presumed, that her secrets resided. She hoped she’d be able to discover even a few of them.
Susanna had graduated with honors from the Women’s Teaching Seminary in Springfield, Missouri, in May. She planned to begin teaching school in her hometown of Artesia after the new year. Miss Elliott, the woman who had been the Artesia schoolmistress for almost twenty years, would be retiring then.
This summer might well be the last one Susanna would ever have to savor as a girl. Soon she’d take up the burdens of a woman. She aimed to do right by them, too. She had no intention of taking up the pallid, uninspiring role of shadow to some masterful man. Not on her life. No. Susanna intended to shine, if not as brightly as her great-aunt Magdalena, at least a little. She intended to scatter the seeds of enlightenment. To address the issue of women’s suffrage and the abysmal laws of this so-called land of freedom that rendered women no better than chattel.
Perhaps that’s why she appreciated the mysterious Magdalena so much. Magdalena had lived. Magdalena hadn’t allowed the constraints of society to thwart her. She’d grabbed life by the lapels and shaken it until it rattled. As an actress and a free spirit, she’d shocked people, certainly, but she had lived.
Susanna frowned. Magdalena had shocked her family so much that they wouldn’t talk about her to this day. Drat them. It was so frustrating. Susanna longed to know everything about the fascinating Magdalena. She wanted to know who she really was, how she really lived, and how she really died.
Susanna was looking forward to this summer in Maine. She wanted to investigate her great-aunt’s life, to probe into Magdalena’s exciting adventures and unlock the mystery of her disappearance.
Unfortunately her mother’s sister, Aunt Winnie Dexter, was even less forthcoming about Magdalena Bondurant than Susanna’s mother had been. These Maine folks were a tight-lipped bunch. “Close,” her father had called it, laughing. Susanna sniffed. Stuffy is how she saw it, and she didn’t think the characteristic was the least bit funny.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
Susanna was so caught up in her own thoughts that the hearty baritone voice at her back startled her. She jumped and jerked her head around to see who had spoken. She was surprised to find a tall young man standing there, garbed in a lightweight summer suit. His summer straw hat was tilted at a cocky angle. He didn’t remove it, either. He was as handsome as the devil, with dark blond hair, blue eyes, a clean-shaven, tanned face, and a wicked grin. Susanna felt herself color, and hated it.
She didn’t admire his insouciant air or the way his gaze raked her from her head to her toes, as if he were undressing her with his mind’s eye. He didn’t so much as bow and beg her pardon, either, but stood there, grinning like a cat who’d just cornered a mouse. The bounder.
“I didn’t expect to find anyone like you in this backwater of a place—especially in the graveyard.”
He spoke to her as if they’d been formally introduced years ago and were now best friends. The nerve of some people!
Susanna had it in her head to ignore him, but the fellow flopped down on Magdalena Bondurant’s headstone, stuck his long legs out in front of him, crossed his ankles, leaned back, peered at her from half-closed eyes, and heated his grin up a degree or two. Susanna was not amused.
“You’re sitting on a headstone,” she pointed out, her voice chilly.
The man made a show of glancing at his seat and arching his brows, as if he were astonished to discover she was right. Then he shrugged and grinned again. “So what? Whoever it belonged to is past caring now.”
She felt her lips purse up and made an effort to smooth them out. Her mother pinched her lips together like that, and she’d gotten herself a fine set of wrinkles because of it. Although Susanna didn’t consider herself vain, she didn’t particularly want to wrinkle. Besides, pursing her lips made her look priggish, and she didn’t wish to be considered a prig even more than she didn’t want wrinkles.
“You may well be wrong there, sir. That headstone marks the grave of my own great-aunt, Magdalena Bondurant, and it’s quite possible that she’s still alive.”
That didn’t sound right. Before Susanna could figure out how to correct it without making herself sound like a fool, the man stood up again. He glanced down at the headstone.
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
Susanna did not approve of his language. Nor did she approve of the faint whiff of distilled spirits she detected on his person. She wrinkled her nose. Here was an example of just the sort of male she despised. Arrogant, rude, and indifferent to the sensibilities of his fellow man. And woman.
“As to that, I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” she said tartly.
The fellow gave a bark of laughter. Susanna wished he wasn’t so blasted handsome. When he laughed, his eyes sparkled and crinkled up at the edges, and he looked very young and quite appealing. Susanna had often wished that people’s exteriors more accurately reflected their interiors, but they seldom did. She considered it a design flaw, and spoke to God about it sometimes. Thus far He hadn’t spoken back.
“So you’re related to this flashy bit of goods, are you?” He looked down at the headstone again, and evidently didn’t hear Susanna’s gasp of outrage—or didn’t care.
“You’re talking about my own great-aunt, sir, and I’ll thank you to do so with respect! She was a great lady and an important actress.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
He winked at her. He actually had the audacity to wink at her! Susanna was mightily offended. She stood in a huff, held her great-aunt’s diary out so the cad could see it, and tapped it with the finger of her other hand. “Do You see this book, sir? This is the diary written by the woman you so vilely disparage. She was embarked upon a noble enterprise and cared deeply about righting society’s wrongs.”
His eyebrows wiggled suggestively. Susanna itched to slap his handsome face, but suspected him of deliberately trying to provoke her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d succeeded.
“I believe,” she said stoutly, love for this unknown great-aunt of hers propelling her, “that Magdalena Bondurant was an underground operative helping the abolitionists!” So there. Let him chew on that for a while. She hoped he choked on his shame.
He laughed at her. Susanna could scarcely believe her eyes and ears when he threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. His stomach made a perfect target, but she didn’t punch him in it and was proud of herself. She was a lady, after all, even if he was about as far from being a gentleman as a man could get.
She continued to glower at him as he grabbed a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his summer coat and wiped his streaming eyes. “Oh, me,” he said. “Oh, my.”
“Spoken like a true egoist,” she muttered.
He looked down at her and stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. He hadn’t done it neatly at all, but let the ends dangle down as if he didn’t care a whit. Susanna got the feeling he didn’t.
“And just what would a little girl like you know about egoism?”
A little girl? Susanna drew herself up to her full five feet, four inches and eyed him with loathing. “I,” she said distinctly, “am a college graduate. With honors. And I know a good deal about the egoism rampant in the male of the species.”
She had hoped to daunt him with her firm speech and obvious education. Instead she only succeeded in winning herself another broad grin.
“Well, Miss College Graduate, I must say it’s a pleasure to meet you. I didn’t know there were any women like you here in Palmyra.” He stuck out his right hand. “Julian Kittrick here, ma’am, reporter for the Denver Post.”
“Denver? Whatever are you doing here in Maine if you’re from Denver?” And why don’t you go back there? Susanna refrained from asking the latter only with an effort.
“I’ll answer that question if you’ll answer one for me.” His hand didn’t waver.
She ignored it and squinted up at him. She didn’t trust him an inch and didn’t know if she should be answering his questions. Before she could say so, he continued.
“I told you who I am. Now it’s your turn. I’ll answer any of your questions if you’ll honor me with your name.”
She hesitated. Since he seemed genuinely interested in who she was, she didn’t want to tell him. On the other hand, her curiosity—either her besetting sin or her greatest virtue, depending on whether her mother or she was describing herself—was intense.
Feeling outmaneuvered and grumpy, she finally said, “Susanna Clement.” Then, after eyeing his outstretched hand for long enough that any right-thinking man would have withdrawn it—Julian Kittrick didn’t—she picked up two of his fingers in two of hers and gave them a little twitch.
“Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not getting away with that.”
With yet another loud laugh, he engulfed her hand in his and shook it vigorously.
His touch was warm, his hand hard with calluses, and Susanna couldn’t quell the thrill that shot through her from the contact. Good heavens. She hadn’t held a man’s naked hand—ever. Even when she’d gone to dances back home, the ladies had worn gloves. This was shocking. It was intimate. She tried to suppress the admission that it was also exciting and quite, quite wickedly delicious.
“Miss Susanna Clement. Lovely name for a lovely lady.”
He bowed over her hand. Susanna’s eyes popped open in surprise at the gallantry. Then he straightened again, and she knew his bow had been a mockery. Whether he was mocking her or society at large, she couldn’t tell, but she was irked. His attitude freed her, though, in a way. At least she didn’t have to beat about the bush or be scrupulously polite. She snatched her hand back.
“All right, Mr. Kittrick. I’ve told you my name. Now you tell me why you’re here in Palmyra, Maine, when you belong in Denver, Colorado.”
He flopped down on Magdalena’s headstone once more, again offending Susanna. “Ah, Miss Clement, you’re out there. I do so belong here in Palmyra, because I’m researching a story.”
Irked that he should be sprawling in that impolite way—after all she, a lady, remained standing and he should, therefore, wait until she’d seated herself before doing so himself, even in a cemetery—Susanna frowned at him. It didn’t help that he persisted in sitting on her great-aunt’s tombstone, either. He really was too insolent.
“Well, then, why are you here?” Because she was so annoyed with him, she crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot. When she caught his gaze straying to her bosom, which her crossed arms emphasized, she dropped her arms to her side. He was truly intolerably awful!
“Actually, Miss Clement, it looks like I’m here for the same reason you are.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“I’ll bet you’re wrong.”
His grin made Susanna long to kick him in the shins. But she was no longer ten years old 8888wand in a battle of strength with the neighbor boy. She was a well-educated young woman who fought with her wits when it proved necessary. Through gritted teeth, she said, “We’ll never know, will we, until you honor your pledge and tell me why you’re here.”
“Touché.” He winked again. She fought her impulse to slap his brazen face. “All right, Miss Clement, I’ll tell you why I’m here. I’m doing research into a piece I’m going to write about this female.” He patted the headstone. “Miss Magdalena Bondurant. Your great-aunt.”
Susanna’s mouth dropped open.
“But I’m afraid you won’t like my angle much.”
Her mouth snapped shut again. “I’m not surprised. What’s your angle, pray tell?”
He reached inside his suit coat and withdrew a small notebook. Susanna looked at it curiously. Could this dreadful man actually be what he claimed to be? She itched to get her hands on that notebook of his. Susanna herself had always harbored a secret passion for journalism. She hated it that it was the beastly Julian Kittrick who was fulfilling her own dreams.
“Several months ago,” he went on. “I read about a beautiful Yankee actress who led a secret life. Rumor had it that she was helping slaves escape from bondage in the south. She cut quite a swath across the eastern seaboard forty years ago. She wasn’t as prudish as her latter-day relatives, I gather.”
He honored Susanna with another broad wink. She refused to give him the indignant reaction she knew he craved, but merely muttered, “Go on.”
“And then, one late June day in 1857, here in Palmyra, Maine, poof!” He snapped his fingers. “She up and vanished.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Everything you’ve said is common knowledge.” She hoped he hadn’t unearthed anything new. Susanna wanted to be the one to discover her great-aunt’s secrets. She didn’t want this awful creature, who respected nothing and no one, to do it.
“Yeah, but there’s more.”
She eyed him malevolently, wishing her great-aunt’s ghost would swoop down and snatch him away for his effrontery. Not that she believed in such things as ghosts.
“Her disappearance wouldn’t be any more than merely interesting if that’s all there was to it, though.”
“For people who possess humane instincts, my great-aunt’s disappearance was far more than merely interesting, Mr. Kittrick. It was tragic.”
She thought she detected a flicker of compassion in his eyes, but she wasn’t sure. It would have surprised her if it had been there.
He did tilt his head, however, as if acknowledging the justice of her caustic observation. “Granted.”
Well, that was something.
“However, did you know that a fortune in precious gems disappeared with her?”
There went his blasted grin again. It flashed across his tanned face like a beam of sunshine. Susanna wasn’t astonished, now that she thought about it, to know that he was from Denver, where people were more apt to sport sunburns than these Maine natives who lived in the rain and fog.
“Again, Mr. Kittrick, you have failed to amaze me or to produce information that isn’t already widely known. A fortune in precious gems disappeared at about the same time my great-aunt did. There is no connection between the two events.”
“Ha! You really believe that, do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then you’re more of a fool than I took you for.”
Seething inside, Susanna chose not to respond.
He sat up straighter on the tombstone. “Face it, Miss Clement, there may be such a thing as coincidence, but it only shows up in novels. In real life, coincidences are as rare as finding a civilized man in the New Mexico Territory.” He laughed at his comparison.
“I was reared in New Mexico Territory, Mr. Kittrick, by people whom I assure you are extremely civilized. I am visiting my maternal aunt here in Palmyra, Maine, for the summer.” She had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Kittrick’s eyes open wide with surprise this time.
“You’re joshing me!”
“I am doing no such thing.”
“Whereabouts do you live? In Santa Fe or Albuquerque? You couldn’t live in any other place in the territory, because you speak in complete grammatical sentences. There’s not another town in the territory that’s sophisticated enough for grammar.” He laughed again.
Until his sarcastic jibe about her home, Susanna hadn’t believed she could become more indignant. She discovered she’d been wrong. “That’s what you think. I happen to live with my family in Artesia. My parents own and run a mercantile establishment there, and I can assure you, Mr. Kittrick, my family is sophisticated.” Slightly.
He relaxed again. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Yes. We’ve already established that point.”
His laugh grated on her nerves like a rusty nail. “At any rate, I don’t believe in coincidences, sweetheart. I’ll lay you odds that Miss Magdalena Bondurant and those jewels left town together. And I’m here to prove it.”
“You can’t.”
“Want to bet?”
“No! You simply can’t do that, Mr. Kittrick. It’s not true, and you can’t print such a scurrilous story.”
“Tell that to my editors. Messrs. Bonfils and Tammen think I can. In fact, they’re paying all my expenses here in Maine just so I can get that story.”
Horrified by his avowed plan, Susanna sank back down on the boulder she’d lately deserted, her heart thudding sickeningly. “Oh, but Mr. Kittrick, it’s not true. My great-aunt was a truly noble woman bent upon a great cause. She was helping slaves to escape, for heaven’s sake. You can’t blacken her memory in such a despicable way. You can’t!”
“Not even if it’s true?”
“But it’s not true!”
He cocked his head to one side. Susanna disapproved of the way his eyes gleamed and of the cynical expression on his face.
“How do you know it’s not true?”
She threw out her arms. “It can’t be! My great-aunt was a courageous lady who was assisting with the Underground Railroad.”
“I don’t buy that for a minute. Anyway, so what if she was?” He crossed his arms over his chest and gazed at her steadily. His straight look disconcerted her, and her heart began to ache.
“But—but, why would a woman whose whole life had been devoted to a great cause suddenly throw all her scruples away, desert her cause, and steal a fortune in gems?”
“I have no idea.” His negligent shrug made Susanna want to push him off of that headstone, flat onto his insolent back.
“If you have no idea, you can’t write it then.” Even as she said the words, she suspected they weren’t true. Mr. Julian Kittrick didn’t appear to her to be the type of journalist who cared very much about the truth. In fact, she had a disagreeable hunch that he might be one of those unscrupulous “yellow” journalists she’d heard so much about in college.
His cocky smile warned her. “Miss Clement, I’m a newspaperman. My newspaper, the Post doesn’t hold with whitewashing stories. My editors like to print the exciting stuff. They don’t flinch from the truth, even if the truth turns out to be shocking—even sordid. If a story has a little dirt clinging to it, they don’t shy away from it.” He brushed a fleck of dust from his lapel in a show of false modesty. “They thrive on excitement, in fact. Not unlike Denver itself.”
“You work for a sensational press, in other words.”
He cocked his head and twinkled at her. “You might put it that way.”
Almost frozen with indignation and impotent rage, Susanna said, “And you’re as happy to make up stories as to find real ones.”
His smile vanished. “No! By God, Miss Clement, you’re really something, you know that? To condemn a fellow you don’t even know isn’t very polite, you know.”
She huffed her contempt.
“Journalism is my profession. I don’t make stories up. I seek out the truth.”
“What if you can’t find the truth?” Her jaw ached from clenching it so tightly.
There went that blasted grin of his again. Another insouciant shrug. Another twinkle. “I’ve got a lively imagination.”
Susanna took several deep, sustaining breaths, and held them, unwilling to shout and give him the impression she was a flighty woman with more emotion than intelligence. She let her breath out slowly, hoping her rage would abate. It didn’t.
“Imagination.” She ground the word out and gave it the emphasis she believed it deserved.
“Don’t you like imagination, Miss Clement? Don’t you have an imagination?” The words were spoken sweetly, as if he’d dipped them in honey before offering them to her.
Susanna was not fooled. “No, Mr. Kittrick. I’ve been told I possess neither humor nor imagination. I do, however, possess a great deal of integrity, and a healthy conscience. I prefer to discover the facts, not to make them up.”
He held his hands up in a gesture begging peace. “I’m not about to make up any facts, Miss Clement. What I8888 plan to do is dig up all the facts I can find. Then and only then, unless I find specific proof of what really happened—which I may well do—I will draw studied conclusions from them.”
“And then use them to blacken my great-aunt’s name.”
He shrugged, as if to tell her that none of this was his fault. Susanna hated him in that instant more than she’d hated the anchovies her aunt Winnie had tried to feed her last Saturday.
“It sounds to me as though you’ve already convicted my great-aunt of theft.”
“Not at all.” His broad smile belied his words. “Why, who knows? I may discover that she wasn’t a light-skirt and shady character at all.”
Susanna’s gasp frightened a bird who’d been observing them from the branch of a spreading maple tree. It squawked and flew away. Susanna glared after it. Julian laughed again.
“How dare you? You great oaf! To sully the character of a great lady with your vile calumnies! You ought to be horsewhipped, Mr. Kittrick!”
His eyebrows lifted in mock hurt. “Why, Miss Clement, how you talk. I think your great-aunt was a peach. In fact, she’s the most interesting thing about Palmyra, Maine. I like the old girl.” He patted the headstone. “And I think she was clever as the devil to pull the wool over so many people’s eyes.”
Although her wrath was all but smothering her by this time, Susanna managed to grind out, “What do you mean by that?”
He gave her another wink. “Why, look at you. She’s even got you, a college-educated female with a puritanical streak, believing she was an abolitionist and a saint.” He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “I think she’s great! Imagine her getting away with a whole bag of precious gems and still making people think she had some kind of morals. It makes me laugh!”
Susanna couldn’t stand to listen to another second of this man’s filthy slanders. It would have been easy for her to shove him off of her great-aunt’s tombstone but she didn’t. She was a lady. Just as Magdalena had been.
Clutching Magdalena Bondurant’s diary in her right hand so tightly that her fingers hurt, Susanna whirled around and marched away from Julian Kittrick. She left him laughing. Her great-aunt would have been proud of her.
Evidently he realized he’d lost his audience, because Susanna heard his startled, “Hey! Hey, don’t run away! I don’t bite, honest! come back here!”
She didn’t turn around.
Chapter Two
Julian wiped his eyes and stared at the retreating form of Susanna Clement. More accurately, he stared at her swaying bottom, which he appreciated more than he could say—more than he would say, at any rate.
A last couple of chuckles bubbled up in his chest and escaped into the still atmosphere of the cemetery. Ah, sweet Prudence. Quite a find, Miss Susanna Clement. He’d had a good time chatting with her. Or riling her. He chuckled again, then burped and slapped his chest. Beer bubbles, he reckoned. Julian was glad he hadn’t burped in front of Miss Prudence; she’d have been even more appalled with him than she already was.
He leaned back and let the sun’s rays caress his face. He preferred being out of doors in the fresh air than hanging out in the saloon, breathing in stale cigar smoke and drinking his afternoons away. Since he had an image as a hard-living, devil-may-care journalist to uphold, he wouldn’t admit it to a soul.
Still, he was glad to know there was more to Palmyra, Maine, than old fogies in the saloon and stiff-necked Puritans. Not that Miss Susanna Clement wasn’t puritanical.
She was sure pretty, though. Too bad she was such a stick. On the other hand, it had been fun irritating her.
He sat up again and watched her pick her way past a couple of the larger tombstones, admiring the play of the sun’s rays on her fine auburn hair. Her eyes had reminded Julian of really good, aged bourbon. He should have told her so and watched her reaction. She’d undoubtedly have been offended. He chuckled again. Next time he met up with her—he knew there would be a next time since Palmyra was such a small place—he’d try to see if he could goad her into slapping him. Then he could pretend moral outrage. He was sure that would make her feel guilty.
He wondered if he was drunk. He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t account for his reaction to Susanna Clement any other way. As a rule, Julian was not a fellow who anticipated meetings with fine, upstanding ladies with pleasure. His kind of female was the type Miss Clement wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room with. Or the same cemetery. He laughed again.
So Magdalena Bondurant was a saint, was she? Julian rose and peered down at the headstone that marked Magdalena’s empty grave. He sincerely doubted her sanctity. Julian had met up with only one saint in his life, and he’d lived damned near everywhere.
As if pulled by a magnetic force, he found himself turning again, hoping to catch a last glimpse of Miss Clement. She was gone. He sighed his disappointment. He wondered where she lived, and wished he’d followed her.
“Don’t be an ass, Kittrick.”
Julian stuffed his hands into his trousers pockets and kicked at some pebbles at his feet. So, what should he do now? He guessed he could always go back to the saloon and drink some more, but he didn’t want to. His vocation notwithstanding, Julian really didn’t care for drinking.
He pulled out his notebook, glanced at the notes he’d taken, and shook his head. Hell. He really hadn’t discovered very much at all about Magdalena Bondurant’s early life. He should probably do some more research. This town had a courthouse. Maybe he’d visit the courthouse and see if there were any legal records he could peruse. How boring. He’d rather argue with Miss Clement some more.
With a grin, Julian set out to find the courthouse. He might even be able to discover the address of one Susanna Clement. Now there was a worthy goal.
# # #
The long summer twilight guided Susanna’s feet as she moped back to the cemetery that evening after supper. Her mood was unsettled—had been ever since she stormed away from Julian Kittrick earlier in the day.
At supper she’d tried to draw her aunt Winnie out on the subject of Magdalena Bondurant, but Aunt Winnie wouldn’t be drawn.
“I don’t know why you want to go digging up old scandals, Susanna.”
“I want to discover the truth.”
Aunt Winnie had sniffed. “The truth is that Magdalena Bondurant is the only skeleton the Bondurant family closet has ever contained, Miss Truth, and the rest of us would just as soon you leave her there.”
Susanna had wanted to argue, but didn’t. She owed Aunt Winnie a good deal and liked her a lot. She didn’t want to upset her. Yet she didn’t understand the family’s reluctance to discuss Great-Aunt Magdalena, either. As for Susanna, she thought Magdalena was no skeleton; she thought she was wonderful. She also subscribed to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s theory that there is properly no history, only biography.
Unfortunately, Magdalena Bondurant’s biography was a big, black blank, at least at the end.
And now that wretched journalist, Mr. Julian Kittrick, was planning to create a biography for her. Susanna’s heart squinched painfully and her hand bunched into a fist she wished she could swing at his arrogant nose.
She wanted to discover the truth herself—the real truth; not some made-up scandal that would titillate the readers of the Denver Post. Unfortunately, she hadn’t a clue as to how to go about it. Her aunt Winnie was certainly no help. And her uncle Cyrus was even worse. Susanna got the feeling he didn’t so much deplore Magdalena’s shady character as simply not care. Uncle Cyrus was even more silent than the rest of her Maine kin.
Susanna had found most of these state-of-Mainers polite, but they certainly weren’t as expansive and friendly as the folks back home. She sighed deeply, and reminded herself that this was what she’d craved. She’d longed to experience the civilized East, and now she was doing so. It merely took some getting used to, was all.
Oh, she knew Palmyra, Maine, wasn’t New York, New York, but at least it was more settled than New Mexico Territory, which was generally outrageous and totally unfit for a woman of her education and ambition, with its hordes of cowboys and bands of scruffy Indians and roving bandit gangs. Still, she wouldn’t have minded if the folks here in Palmyra weren’t such an uncommunicative bunch.
She’d wandered to her great-aunt’s empty grave by this time, sank down on the boulder she’d deserted earlier in the day, and contemplated matters. They looked pretty grim. She couldn’t abide the notion of her great-aunt’s memory being tarnished by that brash, unprincipled journalist. Yet unless Susanna herself turned up information to contradict the conclusions Mr. Kittrick was sure to leap to, that looked like what was going to happen.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured into the gathering shadows.
An answering sigh from nearby startled her into glancing up. She blinked, certain her eyes were deceiving her. They couldn’t possibly be seeing what they were showing her. She rubbed them hard. She stared. She tried to stand but her legs had turned to water and she couldn’t. A scream froze in her throat.
“No,” she whispered past the panic surging inside her. “No.”
The ghost—it had to be a ghost because Susanna knew good and well that regular, everyday people weren’t transparent—seemed to shrug. The gesture looked self-deprecatory, almost diffident, and Susanna rubbed her eyes again.
She’d gone ‘round the bend. Over the edge. Fallen off the deep end. Oh, Lord, what a dismal end to an intelligent woman’s life—and she was only twenty-two years old! She spared a moment to feel sorry for herself.
The ghost cleared its throat. Susanna was astonished that a ghost could do such a thing.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” it said.
Susanna opened her mouth, but couldn’t force anything out. She stared at the apparition. It didn’t seem to be coming any closer, thank God, but it wasn’t going away, either. Whatever would her aunt Winnie write to her parents back home? How could she break the news to them that their only daughter had lost her mind? Tears welled in her eyes at the thought.
The ghost spoke again. “Please don’t be frightened.”
Easy for it to say. Susanna swallowed her terror. At least this figment didn’t appear to be threatening her at the moment. What would happen if she turned her back on it? She wondered if she could simply rise and walk away and be troubled no more with spirits. Now she knew what Ebenezer Scrooge must have felt when first faced with Marley’s ghost. Scrooge was such a miserable old sinner that she hadn’t felt any compassion for him at all until right this minute.
“I’d never have disturbed you if I hadn’t overheard your conversation with that dreadful newspaperman this afternoon.”
Susanna blinked at the ghost. He’d overheard her conversation with Julian Kittrick? And it had inspired him to appear to her? She wished she’d kept silent earlier in the day if this is what her passionate defense of her great-aunt had wrought.
She said, “Go away. Please.” Her voice quivered. It sounded pathetic. She felt pathetic.
The thought occurred to her that if she stared hard enough, this alarming specter would go away, so she did. Maybe it was a trick of the light or an optical illusion occasioned by her own fevered imagination. Not that she had an imagination. And optical illusions didn’t speak to one, did they? Oh, dear.
Staring didn’t work so she shut her eyes, hoping that would. Immediately the unpleasant notion struck her that the thing might creep up on her while she wasn’t looking, so she opened them again and tried staring at it once more. It didn’t move. Oh, sweet heaven, what was she supposed to do now?
It looked to her as if this fellow—if it wasn’t a figment—had been flamboyant in life. In an odd—indeed, a ghostly—way, he still was. Although she could see through him, she could yet detect the colors of his translucent garments. The cloak he had flung over his shoulders in a dramatic manner had what she would swear was a red silk lining. Had been a red silk lining. Once. In life. If a cloak could have life.
She shook her head hard, trying to get her thoughts to settle down. Whatever this thing was, it wore a tall black beaver hat, like the kind Susanna had seen in photographs and paintings of Abraham Lincoln.
Perhaps some school children had rigged up this phantasm as a joke. Maybe they were hiding in the bushes, hoping to amuse themselves by frightening the wits out of visitors to the cemetery. The thought appealed to Susanna, who scanned the area around the apparition hoping to espy ropes and pulleys. She didn’t see any. She also couldn’t recall, off the top of her head, of any fabric that would lend itself to such perfect transparency. Maybe it was a new one, recently invented back here in Maine where there were scores of fabric mills. Maybe this was a test effort to see if it worked, although it betokened mighty shady business practices if it was.
“I mean you no harm.”
It was too late for that since it had already scared her out of ten years’ of her life at least. She scowled at the thing, and feeling the tiniest bit stronger, stood up. Her knees shook.
“Who—what are you?” Again, she remembered Scrooge, and his asking Marley’s ghost if it could sit down. Fat lot of good remembering did her now. As much as she enjoyed reading Mr. Dickens’ books, she’d just as soon her mind would cease wandering. She might need her wits about her if this thing lunged or did one of the other things ghosts were purported to do.
The Headless Horseman, galloped through her brain, and her heart sped up as if trying to run away from it. This was Ichabod Crane territory if there ever was such a place. Brom Bones. Maybe this was a late-nineteenth-century personification—ghostonification?—of Brom Bones. She didn’t see a horse anywhere.
That’s only a story, she reminded herself firmly, which didn’t help. This thing standing—was it standing?—in front of her wasn’t a story. It was a thing, and it terrified her.
“I am Danilo, the Gypsy King,” the thing said, sounding self-important.
Susanna narrowed her eyes. Danilo, the Gypsy King? Who was he trying to trifle with, anyway? Danilo, the Gypsy King, her foot. She frowned at it. “Go away. You’ve had your fun. Now go away and leave me alone.”
“But—”
From out of nowhere, Susanna’s grit returned, propelled by lingering terror. She stamped her foot. “No! You just go away now. You’ve had your little joke and frightened me quite enough already. I’m tired of your silly, childish prank and don’t want to have any more to do with it. Or you. Now go!” She pointed in the direction of the forest that abutted the graveyard.
To her utter astonishment, the ghost let out with a wail of sorrow, collapsed onto a headstone, and began weeping piteously. She gaped at it, wondering what its game was now.
“I knew it,” the thing sobbed. “I knew I’d make a botch of this in death, as I botched everything in life. Oh, woe! Oh, alas! Oh, alack!”
Although the words were overly theatrical and made Susanna’s sensible nature recoil, his terrible grief seemed genuine. In fact, Susanna had never witnessed such a spectacle of anguish before. She didn’t know what to do. Now that the thing’s attention had been diverted she supposed she could run away. Yet Susanna had never been unkind, and this entity’s sorrow touched her.
Because she still didn’t trust it, she said, “Stop that.” Although she tried to sound firm, her command lacked authority.
The ghost only shook its head and continued weeping. Disconsolate. Susanna understood the meaning of the word now as she never had before. This poor ghost was disconsolate, and its unhappiness made her unhappy. “Here,” she said, trying again. “Stop that. There’s no need to cry. Please.”
It looked up at her. Susanna saw that its transparent face was streaked with transparent tears.
This was no schoolyard prank. The knowledge jarred her. There’s no way on the face of this green earth that school children could have rigged up such a thing.
Her thoughts turned to Julian Kittrick. Was he behind this? It was difficult for her to feature even the clever, care-for-nobody Mr. Kittrick coming up with this sophisticated a prank. Susanna had seen a moving image projected onto a screen when she was in college, but this was too advanced for the technology that had produced that image.
This was—this was a ghost.
Oh, dear. Still unsure of herself, she said, “I beg your pardon if I offended you.”
It shook its head. “I’m used to it.”
“I can imagine you must be.” The statement came out sounding more tart than she’d intended, and it produced another wail of melancholy.
“I thought you’d understand,” the ghost cried thickly. “I thought, when I heard you defend Magdalena this afternoon, that if there was anyone alive on the earth who’d understand, it would be you. I should have known better.” The words and the tone in which he said them were as bitter as gall.
Susanna swallowed. She still didn’t really believe this. Not really. Although when she thought about it, it made as much sense to find a ghost in a graveyard as to think she’d suddenly lost her mind. She’d never shown a single hint of mental instability before that she could recollect.
Because she didn’t fancy being made a fool of and still couldn’t quite believe the evidence of her senses, she asked cautiously, “What—what do you mean?”
The ghost stood and took a step—or a waft—toward her. She backed up an equal distance. She didn’t want that thing any closer to her than it already was. It stopped, looking aggrieved. Too bad. Susanna wasn’t about to relax her guard yet.
“I mean you no harm,” it repeated.
“So you’ve said.” Skepticism dripped from her words.
The ghost heaved an enormous sigh. “Ah, cruel beauty. I should have known.”
“What should you have known?” Was he referring to her as a beauty? Or was the beauty to which he referred a generic expression meant to be applied to women in general or, perhaps, the entire human race? She wished she knew, because she’d be flattered if he thought she was pretty, but she didn’t feel up to asking.
“I should have known that a relative of Magdalena Bondurant would be as cruel as she was.”
Susanna straightened indignantly. “My great-aunt was not cruel! She was a splendid lady endeavoring to serve a glorious cause.”
The ghost eyed her caustically. “Yes. That’s what she used to say, too.”
He certainly had a melodramatic way of expressing himself. Susanna tilted her head to one side and studied him. All in all, she did have to admit that he didn’t seem dangerous. He appeared rather effete, actually.
Not that Susanna knew much about effete men. The only men she’d been exposed to before her train arrived in Maine three weeks ago had been rugged frontiersmen and cowboys. She seen a vicious gang of bank robbers riding away from the scene of their crime once, but that was all. Effete individuals, Susanna supposed, didn’t travel west and settle new territories. They stayed where they were, back here in the already-settled east, which made sense to her.
“Exactly who are you, and what do you know about Magdalena Bondurant?” she asked, her tone sharp.
If he were a corporeal being, he might be said to have slapped a hand to his breast. As it was, his hand went partially through his ghostly body and the effect wasn’t quite as stirring. If she hadn’t still been frightened, Susanna might have giggled.
“Magdalena Bondurant and I were engaged to be married.”
Susanna’s eyes popped open. “Really?”
He nodded. “I loved her more than life itself.”
It occurred to her to wonder if his love had contributed to Magdalena’s disappearance and his own death in what looked as though it had been his prime, but she couldn’t think of a tactful way of asking. After a moment’s thought, she said cautiously, “Would you be willing to tell me about it?”
He inclined his head in a regal gesture. “If you are willing to listen. That is why I appeared to you tonight.”
“I’m willing.” Actually, now that her terror had abated somewhat, Susanna found herself almost eager. Almost. She still didn’t understand this Danilo character, couldn’t quite reconcile herself to his being a ghost, and wasn’t ready to relax in his presence. She felt compelled to admit, “I don’t really believe in ghosts, you know.”
He sighed. “I know.”
“But I’ll listen.” She didn’t add that she’d suddenly decided to listen as the means of discovering exactly what sort of trick was being played on her.
“May I come closer?” he asked.
She hesitated too long for politeness, and he sighed again, more heavily this time. “Never mind. I’ll rest here.” He sank down onto another tombstone, this one a large, flat monument marking the final resting place of a family called Homstead.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Danilo, but I’m not accustomed to dealing with—” She paused, wondering how to phrase her statement without giving offense. Then she decided she might as well be honest. “Ghosts.”
“No one is,” Danilo said glumly. “And the name isn’t Mr. Danilo. It’s Danilo, the Gypsy King. I,” he added with a dramatic lilt, “was an actor in life. I have assumed the persona of my greatest role in death.”
Susanna frowned as she racked her brain, trying to recall the name of a play that contained a character named Danilo, the Gypsy King. “Um, what play is that from, Mr.—er—Danilo. I don’t seem to remember.”
He frowned, too. “No. You wouldn’t, of course. I died before Danilo could join the ranks of such immortal characters as Hamlet or Henry V.”
Susanna refrained from pointing out that Henry V had been a successful, if rather encroaching, English king and might, therefore, have been remembered even without Shakespeare’s help. She did say, “How sad,” because it seemed appropriate.
Danilo appeared to appreciate her sentiment. He nodded his head in acknowledgment and sighed again. “Yes. It was terribly sad.” He lifted his head, which had been drooping in a pose of artistic melancholy. “I was good, you know. I was a brilliant actor and an exceptional playwright. Magdalena’s greatest performances were in roles that I created for her.”
Brilliant and exceptional and not exactly modest. Susanna fought a grin, and focused on his last statement. “You wrote roles for her?”
He gazed at her for several seconds before saying, “I loved her.”
His simple words touched Susanna, perhaps because he’d not adorned them with exalted emotions or dramatic inflection. She sighed. How romantic. How sad. How utterly fascinating.
“Er, you must have died not long after she disappeared.” She waved her hand in his direction. “I mean, you—you don’t look very old.” Was that presumptuous? Was it rude? Susanna’s curiosity had risen in direct proportion to the slackening of her fright. Even though she still wasn’t quite sure she believed this fellow was actually a ghost—in fact, a rational part of her mind scoffed at the very notion—she was enchanted by his story.
“Alas, no. I was not old. I am forever the age I was that dark, evil night.”
“Um, how old is that?” How rude of her! Still, she seemed unable to suppress her curiosity now that it had been stirred.
“Thirty-five. Thirty-five years old, and in the first flower of the achievement of my talents. Thirty-five years of life, of learning, of observation. I had only begun to bring my gifts to fruition. My creative capacity was burgeoning. My first two plays had been received to almost universal acclaim. A brilliant career lay ahead of me. I was cut down in the very prime of my life. Before I had been given a chance to show the world what lay within my fertile brain.”
He almost tapped his head with a finger, but the digit seemed to slide right through his skull. Susanna had the fanciful thought that he’d meant to scratch his brain. She wondered why she couldn’t see his internal organs.
She stared at him, rapt. She’d never heard anyone speak about himself with such a lack of modesty. She wondered if all actors were like Danilo, or if he’d been a special case. He’d mentioned a dark and evil night, and she considered asking him how he’d met his end but she couldn’t make herself do it. She guessed he’d tell her if he wanted to.
He looked up abruptly, and Susanna jumped.
“I mean you no harm,” he said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “But you must prevent that young man from blackening the reputation of the finest woman who ever walked the earth.”
The finest woman who ever walked the earth. Susanna, who had forgotten all about why she’d come to the cemetery this evening, cudgeled her brain. “Oh! You mean Magdalena Bondurant.”
“Of course that’s who I mean. Who did you think I meant?” Danilo sounded peeved.
Susanna took exception to his tone of voice. “Well, I beg your pardon, but I’m not in the habit of meeting ghosts in graveyards. Whatever customs prevail in Maine, we don’t have such things in New Mexico Territory.” At least she hoped they didn’t. As interesting as this was, she didn’t want it to become a habit as it was too unnerving.
He sniffed as if he, too, were miffed. “Believe me, it’s no more fun appearing to people than it is being appeared to. It took me hours to find the fortitude. I was bracing myself for a hideous scream, and I have extremely sensitive nerves.”
Susanna could have sworn he didn’t have any nerves at all after having been staring straight through him for several minutes now, but she didn’t argue. Since she wanted the matter cleared up once and for all, she said, “I am not in the habit of screaming, Mr.—what should I call you? I can’t call you Danilo.”
“Why ever not?” He looked at her as if she’d said something irrational.
“Why not? Because it’s impolite and unseemly, is why not! Why, we haven’t even been properly introduced.”
She saw him roll his eyes. She hadn’t known ghosts could do that.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Young women of today are so much more prudish than they were in my day.”
“I don’t believe that for an instant. In fact, my great-aunt Magdalena even wrote about how stuffy her contemporaries were. Her own family was shocked when she took to the stage.”
“You make it sound as if she took to crime,” Danilo observed sourly.
“Whatever you might think, it was shocking at the time.” Susanna lifted her chin. “In fact, it would be shocking today, if I were to do so.”
“You? Never!”
Of all the nerve! As much as she knew he was right, still more did Susanna resent him coming right out and saying so. Besides, how did he know she was a deplorable actress. The only reason she knew it was because of the class play she’d been in. A shudder rattled her when she recalled that awful experience. She’d been so scared. And so bad. Susanna wasn’t accustomed to failing at the things she attempted, and she hadn’t enjoyed the experience one little bit.
“Oh, don’t look so angry, Miss Clement. It takes a certain indefinable quality—an ineffable something—to be a success on the stage. Your great-aunt had it.” He sighed again with exaggerated melancholy, and shook his head. “She had it.”
“I’m sure she did. Her diary indicates she was a woman of rare sensibilities and talent.”
“She was.”
“That still doesn’t solve the problem of what I should call you. Don’t you have a last name?”
He scowled at her. “I began life as Daniel Matteucci,” he said stiffly.
Susanna brightened. “What an interesting name, Mr.—Matteucci, was it?”
“Yes.” It didn’t sound as though Danilo shared her enthusiasm for his surname.
“It sounds foreign.”
He slanted her an exasperated glance. “All persons living in these United States and its territories—barring the Indians—are foreign, if it comes to that.”
“I suppose so. But where is the surname Matteucci from?”
“Italy.”
Italy. Sunny Italy. Land of many feudal—and feuding, if all Susanna’d read about them was true—states. Land of grapes and olives and great Renaissance artists and hot, passionate, Latin blood. Brooding, dangerous, dark-eyed men. Beautiful, sloe-eyed women. Spaghetti. Susanna had eaten spaghetti once. It had seemed deliciously, daringly exotic to her.
“Are you from Italy?”
He shook his head. “New York City.”
“Oh.” That didn’t sound anywhere near as romantic as Italy. Still, she could detect an Italianate air about Danilo now that she knew it was there. He’d obviously had dark hair and eyes when he was alive, and she thought she detected a hint of olive in his complexion, although it was difficult to tell, what with being able to see trees, bushes, and headstones through it.
“Were your parents from Italy?”
He nodded.
“Can you say something in Italian to me?”
He glared at her, and she guessed she’d asked the wrong thing. Evidently, Mr. Matteucci wasn’t interested in reliving his youth. She cleared her throat. “Er, so what is it you want me to do? Exactly.”
“I want you to discover the Truth.” He made truth sound like the Holy Grail.
Susanna knitted her brows. “I’d like to do that, Mr. Matteucci. In fact, that was one of my primary reasons for visiting Maine this summer. I want to discover the truth. But I don’t know how to do it.” Injustice rose in her breast and flooded her with indignation. “That awful man is going to make up something scandalous if I can’t, though.”
She saw him nod. “Exactly. That’s why you, who believe in the goodness of my cara, must discover the truth first.”
Feeling pressured and more than a little exasperated, Susanna said, “Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, but how? How am I supposed to discover the truth? It all happened so long ago, and nobody’s around who remembers any longer. Even if people who were young then are still alive, wouldn’t somebody have said something before now if they knew anything?”
“Not necessarily.”
Recalling her own frustration with trying to draw her Maine relatives out on the subject of Magdalena, Susanna grumbled. “You’re right. They’re not exactly chatty here, are they.”
“No, they’re not. And taciturnity is not the only roadblock to the truth, either.”
Danilo glowered ominously, and Susanna had the feeling he knew more than he’d divulged so far. She clasped her hands to her bosom. “You know something! You have a lead for me!”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, then, tell me! Stop being coy, for heaven’s sake!”
He eyed her with disapproval. “Some people,” he said scathingly, “have no flair.”