Alexandra's heart ached for Matthew and the little boy he'd lost. A happy child named Christopher who had played and laughed and died many years before his time. Was it any wonder Matthew had sought solace in a bottle of whiskey?
With their child growing safe within her belly, she could only guess at his anguish. This baby was still a stranger to her and yet she loved it with a fierceness that sometimes frightened her. She rarely painted any longer and it seemed as if she lost yet another part of her independence with each night she spent in Matthew's arms, powerless to break free. Her sense of self, her need to create beauty on canvas, had both been overshadowed by her need for this man.
The phrase, "Like mother, like daughter," occurred to Alexandra with increasing frequency and she found it difficult to reconcile her feelings for Matthew with the fact that technically he was a married man. Although he still had not spoken of love, that emotion seemed visible in the way he held her through the night, the way he eased her fears and encouraged her dreams. Surely God would not bless her with Matthew's child, only to withhold the sacrament of marriage.
We will find a way, she told herself each morning when she awoke. All Matthew had to do was contact his wife, offer her a settlement. Madolyn had already built a new life for herself; Alexandra was certain the woman would be ready now to set Matthew free.
Life had become so complex, so confusing that were it not for the simple beauty of the love she felt for Matthew she might have booked passage back to Provence.
I never knew how it would be, Alexandra wrote to Gabrielle in French rusty from lack of use these past months. He has become my reason for being.
And—may God forgive her—she allowed her old friend to believe she and Matthew were married.
By mid-October, Alexandra's pregnancy was quite apparent and she stopped accompanying Matthew on his trips into town. Evangeline Ames's eyes were too sharp and she did not want to be the topic of any more gossip.
Sea View offered her the privacy to revel in the changes happening within her body—and the opportunity to shield those changes from prying eyes.
She spent her days resting and walking the windswept beach, trying to see around the corners of her life and seize a glimpse of her future. The gypsies had set up a new camp on the beach some two miles east of Sea View and twice Alexandra had tried to find the young girl who had given her the warning about Stephen, "the yellow-haired man," and thank her but each time she had been turned away by a fierce-looking young man guarding the caravan.
Finally on the morning of All Hallow's, Alexandra found the girl collecting cranberries from the bog alongside Old Beach Lane.
"I have been looking for you," Alexandra said in Rom to ease the girl's fears.
"I know," the girl replied in English. "It has been spoken of in the camp."
"You were right," Alexandra said, suppressing the urge to pat the girl on the forearm to reassure her. "You warned me about the yellow-haired man and it came to pass."
"You are angry?" The girl's onyx eyes widened and she took a step back.
Alexandra smiled. "I am only sorry I did not realize his treachery sooner. I am in your debt."
The girl clutched her basket close to her chest. "You will not tell the authorities I take these berries?"
"I will not."
Alexandra stood quietly as the young gypsy studied her.
"Your babe comes with the New Year," the girl said. "A fine daughter."
"Not a son? I had imagined the child to be a boy." A boy to fill the emptiness in Matthew's heart left by the loss of his son.
The girl's long hair whipped around her face as she shook her head. "A fine and healthy daughter to make you proud but there—" She stopped and looked away. "I say no more."
"But you must!" Fear raced through Alexandra like a chill wind off the ocean and she grabbed the girl's slender wrist. "Is it the baby? Is there something you see in the baby's future that you dare not tell me?"
"'Tis not the baby's future, lady, 'tis yours."
"Mine? What on earth—?"
"I say too much," the girl protested, backing away. "'Tis not illness or death I see."
"Then what?" Alexandra cried. The girl's eyes mirrored Alexandra's anxiety. "I see no man, lady. I see no man with you at your time at all."
#
That evening Alexandra and Matthew slipped away from the house and lit a fire on the beach. He wrapped her in a warm blanket and they sat together and watched the flames dance against the backdrop of the roaring ocean.
"A girl," said Matthew, his hand warm against her round belly. "I'll be damned."
"I promised you a son," she murmured. "Would a daughter disappoint you?"
His laughter rumbled delightfully against her ear. "Not if she is like her mother."
Like mother, like daughter. Alexandra sighed deeply. Was there to be no escape from it? All day long she'd carried the gypsy's prediction inside her chest like a hot stone burning against her heart. She would give birth without Matthew to comfort her, without Matthew to witness the miracle of his newborn daughter, without Matthew to pledge his undying love to the family they had created.
"You are quiet," Matthew said, stroking her hair. "Do you feel unwell?"
"I wish my mother were here with me," she blurted. "She would understand."
But, of course, that was impossible for it wasn't Marisa Glenn Alexandra needed; it was Esme. Esme with the kind voice and the gentle hands and the gypsy-black eyes that saw into Alexandra's soul and cast light where there had been only darkness.
"Then write to your mother," Matthew said, meaning Marisa. "Tell her how you are feeling."
Alexandra thought about the score of letters she had begun to Marisa only to consign them, unfinished, into the fireplace in her room.
"I have you, Matthew," she whispered against his cheek, trying to will away the gypsy's prediction. "You are all that I need..."
#
Switzerland
"Madame is well today?"
Marisa looked up from the book she was reading. "If Madame were well she would not be in this godforsaken place, now would she, Doctor Beaulieu?"
He leaned over to place a hand upon her forehead and she caught the scent of lilac-scented soap. Fop, she sneered inwardly. She had always preferred a man to smell of the outdoors, of fresh pine and clean skin and the brisk November winds blowing beyond her window—not of womanly flowers.
"Pain?" he asked, sitting opposite her.
"Pain." Jagged flaming barbs of pain ripping away at her day and night.
He patted her hand. "I shall increase the morphine dosage immediately."
She nodded her thanks, unwilling to acknowledge her need.
"You realize, Madame, that you shall not be entirely lucid with such a dosage."
"I realize." Dull my mind, Doctor. Lift me from this bed, this room, this body and take me somewhere else.
"If you have any familial matters that need tending, this would be the time."
Alexandra. She owed Alexandra a letter of explanation. "I shall take care of such matters immediately, Doctor."
As soon as she could figure out how to tell her daughter she was dying.
And as soon as she could figure out why her daughter should even care.
#
Thanksgiving Day dawned clear and cold and Sea View buzzed with activity. Matthew watched, amused, as Alexandra threw herself into the thick of things. She had taken to baking pies in the kitchen with Cook who had become one of her staunchest supporters. Alex overflowed with questions about this uniquely American holiday and he found her enthusiasm to be catching.
Even Andrew seemed caught up in the spirit and Dayla informed everyone that he would indeed be taking dinner in the dining room that afternoon. A sense of family had settled over the house and they had Alexandra to thank for it.
For the first time since Christopher's death, the splendors of whiskey had dimmed. She was his intoxicant; the sweetness of her body, the buffer between himself and old guilts.
The past, most especially his disastrous marriage, had no business intruding upon him now. Not even Strawbridge's letters with their portents of doom could dim the joy he felt and he tried to communicate that in his return letters.
You must understand my position for neither money nor Madolyn's threats will bring me back to San Francisco. Be happy for me, Edward, for my life is here and here it will remain.
He had found happiness for the first time in years, an optimism that he'd thought forever lost and he would do anything in his power if he could suspend the passage of time and savor these golden days a little longer.
But he would be both a fool and a liar if he didn't admit to himself the guilt he felt each time he looked at Alexandra growing large with his child. It was not as if he could offer her more. On the other side of the continent, a woman he had learned to hate carried his name and fortunes through the bedrooms of San Francisco.
No, there would be no marriage, no wedding band glittering on Alexandra's finger; but, Matthew took comfort from the fact that what he gave her was everything he had to give: his heart.
#
San Francisco
Stephen Lowell's patience was wearing thin.
It was the first week of December. The round of holiday soirees had just begun and still he was no better off than when he first arrived.
He watched as Madolyn McKenna poured them each a tumbler of brandy then settled on the settee next to him. Her heart-shaped face was flushed with pleasure—and with good reason. They had just spent two interesting hours in her enormous bed.
For five months he'd painstakingly laid the groundwork for his plan to destroy both McKenna and Andrew and for four months he'd been up against a stone wall.
Madolyn had definite ideas about what constituted revenge and forcing her husband back to San Francisco did not figure among them. There was an undercurrent to Madolyn that he had not at first recognized but which now disturbed him. She was given to mercurial changes of personality that kept him ill at ease, never knowing which Madolyn he would find in his bed.
Violence rippled through her, an uncontrollable edge of wildness that would drive him away were it not for the prize at stake. She leaned back and her negligee dipped low across her breasts. At that moment he would forego another taste of them for the satisfaction of getting his plan underway.
A letter from Danziger & Doheny burned inside his breast pocket. He had the information he needed to make Madolyn change her mind and now was the time to use it.
"You do not seem to understand my position," she was saying as a kittenish smile drifted across her perfect face. "Although you have made a rather valiant effort..."
"A compliment, Madolyn?" he drawled, raising his brandy toward her in salute. "Does Vladimir rate such high praise?"
She dismissed her other lover with a wave of her tiny hand. "That is like comparing an appetizer to a main course, darling."
"And I—?"
"You are quite definitely the main course."
"I can do more for you than please you in bed, Madolyn."
"I'm sure you can, but you must understand my feelings. Why would I want to bring Matthew back to San Francisco when I already have access to everything he owns? What can be gained by that?"
"Revenge."
Her brow wrinkled. "I was under the impression revenge is what I have been gaining all along."
This was the opportunity he'd been waiting for since the day he arrived at Ferry Landing.
"He has not been suffering in New York, Madolyn."
He sensed her body stiffening. "As I understood it, Matthew has been ruining himself with drink. He is a lonely, bitter man—exactly the fate I intended for him."
Slowly he withdrew the envelope from his pocket and, equally slowly, removed the letter and unfolded it.
"I appreciate your theatrics, Stephen," she said brusquely, "but you shan't change my mind."
"Listen, first, Madolyn. Listen and then tell me how you feel."
Five minutes later he had enlisted Madolyn McKenna's full cooperation.
"I shall see him dead by my own hand before I see him the father of a child," she swore with savage intensity. "He'll never hold that baby in his arms, Stephen. Of that you can be sure."
For a moment, Stephen Lowell pitied Matthew McKenna.
But only for a moment.