Kathleen Winsor: Forever Amber

Corinna’s cool answer astonished her. “You may think so if you like, madame.”

Amber sprang up out of her chair. “I may think so if I like!” she jeered. Swiftly she crossed the few feet of floor between them and was standing beside her. “Don’t be a fool! You won’t believe me because you’re afraid to! He never stopped seeing me at all!” Her excitement was mounting dangerously. “We’ve been meeting in secret—two or three times a week—at a lodging-house in Magpie Yard! All the afternoons you thought he was hunting or at the theatre he was with me! All the nights you thought he was at Whitehall or at a tavern we were together!”

She saw Corinna’s face turn white and a little muscle twitched beside her left eye. There! thought Amber with a fierce surge of pleasure. She felt that one, I’ll wager! This was what she had come for: to bait her, to prod her most sensitive emotions, to humiliate her with boasting of Bruce’s infidelity. She wanted to see her cringe and shrink. She wanted to see a woman who looked as miserable, as badly beaten as she felt.

“ Now what d’you make of his fidelity to you!”

Corinna was staring at her, a kind of repugnant horror on her face. “I don’t think there’s any shred of honourable feeling left in you!”

Amber’s mouth twisted into an ugly sneer; she did not realize how unpleasant she looked, but was past caring if she had. “Honour! What the devil is honour! A bogey-man to scare children! That’s all it’s good for these days! You can’t think what a fool you’ve looked to all of us these past months—we’ve been laughing in our fists at you—Oh, never deceive yourself—he’s laughed with the rest of us!”

Corinna got to her feet. “Madame,” she said coldly, “I have never known a woman of worse breeding. I can well believe that you came out of the streets—you act like it and you talk like it. I am only amazed you could have produced such a child as Bruce.”

Amber gasped, completely taken aback at that. Lord Carlton had never told her that his wife knew she was the boy’s mother. And yet she did know and had never said a word to anyone, had not refused to have him about her, and seemed to love him as sincerely as if he had been her own.

Good Lord! the woman was a greater fool even than she had thought!

“So you did know that he’s mine! Well, now you know me too, and I wonder how you like knowing that one day my son will be Lord Carlton—everything your husband has and is will belong to my child, not to yours! How d’you like that, eh? Are you so damned virtuous and noble that it doesn’t rankle in your flesh at all?”

“You know very well that’s impossible unless his legitimacy can be proved.”

She and Corinna stood very close, breathing each other’s breath, staring into each other’s eyes. Amber felt an overpowering desire to grab her by the hair, tear at her face, destroy her beauty and her very life. Something, she hardly knew what, held her in check.

“Will you please leave my rooms, madame,” said Corinna now, her lips so stiff with fury that though they shook they scarcely moved to form the words.

All at once Amber laughed, a high hysterical laugh of fury and nervous repression. “Listen to her!” she cried. “Yes, I’ll leave your rooms! I can’t get away from you too soon!” With swift jerky movements she gathered up the muff and fan she had dropped and then turned once more to face Corinna, breathing hard, quivering in every muscle. She could no longer think but she began to say, half unconsciously, something she had long wanted to say to her.

“You’ll soon be lying-in, won’t you? Think of me sometimes then—Or d‘you imagine he’ll be waiting by your bed like a patient dog till you’re—”

She saw Corinna’s eyes close slowly, the irises rolling away. At that instant a man’s harsh voice cracked through the room.

“Amber!”

She whirled and saw Bruce striding toward her, looking gigantic in his fury. She started a little as though about to run, but he seized her by the shoulder, spun her around and at the same instant his other hand lashed out and struck her across the face. For an instant she was completely blind and then she caught a flashing glimpse of his face above her, contorted, ugly —and she knew that he was angry enough to kill her.

Her reaction was swift, partly through fear and her own violent instincts of self-preservation, partly because all control over her mind had been gone long before this. Wild as an animal she began to kick and scratch and pound at him with her fists, shrieking with rage, cursing him with every vile word she knew. Over and over again she screamed that she hated him. For the moment her lust for revenge was so powerful she would have killed him if she could—all the pain she had ever suffered because of him, all the jealous hatred she had for Corinna had seized hold of her and made her something evil, dangerous, demoniacal.

After his first swift outburst of fury Bruce had instantly recovered himself. Now he was only trying to bring her to her senses, though the strength begot of her rage made it almost impossible for him to control her.

“Amber!” he shouted, trying to break through her deafness and blindness. “Amber, for God’s sake—be still!”

One side of his face was raw and bleeding and long claw marks showed where she had raked her nails across his cheek. His wig and hat had fallen off, Amber’s gown was ripped across one breast and her hair had come undone. Corinna stood watching them, motionless with horror, sick with dread and humiliation.

Suddenly he seized Amber by the back of her hair and gave a violent jerk that snapped her neck so hard the vertebrae cracked. She let out an agonized scream and the next instant her fist smashed into the side of his face, bruising her knuckles and knocking his head backward. His eyes turned green and he seized her neck in both hands, his strong lean fingers began to close in. Her face darkened. Frantically she tore at his hands, her tongue was forced out and her eyes seemed to burst from the sockets. She tried to scream.

Corinna rushed toward them. “Bruce!” she cried. “ Bruce! You’re killing her!”

He seemed not to hear but Corinna dragged at his arms, hammered with her fists against him, and all at once he let her go. Amber dropped like a sack. With a look of unutterable disgust on his face—disgust which seemed as much against himself as Amber—he turned away, holding up his hands, the fingers still bent, and he stared at them as though they did not belong to him. Corinna was watching him, tenderly, with a pity that was almost maternal.

“Bruce—” she said at last, her voice very soft. “Bruce—I think you must send for the midwife. The pains come often now—”

He stared at her dully, slow realization spreading over his face. “You’re having pains—Oh, Corinna! ” There was a sound of almost agonized remorse in his voice. Suddenly he picked her up in his arms and walked into the other room to the bed. There he laid her down. The blood on his shirt and coat had smeared her gown and the side of her cheek. His hand reached down to wipe it away; then swiftly he turned and ran out of the room.

For two or three minutes Amber lay senseless on the floor. As she began to regain consciousness it seemed to her that she lay in a warm, soft and comforting bed; she tried to pull the blankets about her. It was several moments longer before she was conscious enough to remember where she was and what had happened. Then she tried to sit up. The blood thumped heavily in her ears and eyes, her throat ached and she felt dazed and stupid. Very slowly she dragged herself to her feet and she was standing there, almost as though hung from a hook, her head drooping, when Bruce came into the room again. She looked up and he stopped for a moment beside her.