Night of the Candles Read Free Page A

order me. You have not the right. I go, but it is because I have no liking for seeing your sly face.”
    Sophia closed the door with a vindictive snap while the other woman was still speaking, and then moved to place the pitcher on the washstand. “That Marta,” she said with a touch of scorn. “I can’t see why Jason keeps her on. She is no use anymore.”
    “No use?” Amanda asked, seeing that some contribution to the conversation was expected of her.
    “She calls herself a nurse, in imitation of Miss Nightingale, but lady’s maid would be more like it. She was Amelia’s slave from the moment Jason brought her here. For me, I doubt she could help with a hangnail.” A grimace twisted her lips.
    Amanda walked to the washstand. She wiped the grime from the bowl with the towel and then tipped water into it. Picking up the soap she asked, “Amelia needed a nurse?”
    “Didn’t you know?”
    “We … didn’t hear from her often. My grandfather never approved of the marriage.”
    “Yes, I know. Stupid of him. Jason could have been of invaluable aid with his resources.”
    Her grandfather had not needed Jason’s aid, but Amanda made no comment. She patted her face dry then let her gaze go to the window where a streak of lightning flashed.
    “Was she ill long?”
    “Several months. She was delicate from the first, complaining of headaches and lying about in her dressing gown.”
    Delicate? Amelia had been a normal, healthy girl. There had never been any questions of weakness or ill health of a chronic nature before her marriage.
    “When exactly … did she die?”
    “It must be over three months. Odd, it seems longer. I suppose that’s because Jason has been so hard to live with.”
    “What caused it … how did it happen?”
    “The doctor from town said it was a growth in her head. She couldn’t stand the pain. In the end she took her own life. She drank an overdose of the laudanum she had been taking to ease her.”
    “Amelia? Take her own life? I can’t believe it.” Amanda whispered. “She would never have done such a thing.”
    “No? You should have been here to hear her cry and beg for death,” Sophia said with a callous authority that forbade contradiction.
    As they made their way back downstairs Amanda could not rid herself of her first conviction. Amelia could not have committed suicide. She had been so gay, so carefree. She loved all the bright things in life, sunny days, parties, music, pretty clothes in brilliant colors. She had loved to laugh, to meet new people. When they had gone away to boarding school, the seminary for young ladies, Amelia had been the one who was taken up by everyone. She had been the one with the most friends, the most secrets to giggle over.
    When they were children together they had been close, she and Amelia, dependent on each other for help and companionship, and they had remained good friends within the framework of the school, but Amanda could not help feeling left out.
    She had been a quiet solemn child, a reserved young woman with a strong practical streak that had been fostered by her grandparents. She was apt to choose materials for her clothes for their durability and failure to show soiling rather than for beauty. Lacking the outgoing personality of Amelia, she had never really cared for the gregarious life of the boarding school, and so she had not been upset when she had been called home to look after her grandmother in her last illness.
    It was in the last months of the final term, after Amanda had gone, that Amelia had met Jason Monteigne. It had been at a house party near Christmas, a party given by the parents of one of her many friends. She had been, for Amelia, strangely secretive about the meeting. She had known their grandfather, a Scotsman by birth and a staunch Presbyterian, would not approve of a man whose mother was half French and half Indian of the Caddo tribe, whose father had made his fortune as a riverboat gambler, and who was himself a