“Silly,” she said, but she pulled the ribbon bell rope that hung beside her bed and Georgia appeared at the door.
“Bring the baby,” Lucinda said to her arrogantly.
“Only if it is a girl,” Pierce amended.
Georgia smiled her soft warm smile, “It is a girl, sir—”
She went away to fetch the child and Pierce sat down on the bed and smiled down at his wife and teased her in the extravagance of his love. “Hardhearted as ever, I see, even to your daughter — keeping her out in the cold, in another room!”
Lucinda had always refused to have the babies in her own room. Now she pouted again, prettily. “She cries more than the boys did.”
“Ah, maybe you’ve met your match, Luce,” Pierce retorted.
Georgia came in, the pink bundle in her arms, and Pierce rose as she drew back a corner of the silk afghan. He looked down into the face of his daughter. She was asleep. He studied every detail of her round pretty face. Her tiny features had a firmness which disconcerted him. Neither of his sons had looked so complete at birth. He held his gift toward Lucinda. “Here,” he said hastily, “take it! I can see she’s a female.”
Then he waited for the first look in Lucinda’s eyes when she saw the bauble. She opened the box. “Oh, Pierce,” she breathed, “how beautiful!” She lifted sapphire earrings and brooch from the grey velvet. “Oh, perfect!” she sighed.
“You’re a damned expensive woman,” he growled proudly, and at his voice the baby opened her eyes and gave a soft cry.
He turned at the sound of this new voice, and gazed down into large, deeply violet eyes.
“Sapphira,” he said to his daughter, and smiled in pride that somehow held a heartbreak in it which he could not understand. “I have a notion that you’re going to be expensive, too,” he said wryly.
Chapter Four
PIERCE DELANEY LOOKED DOWN the long table loaded with silver and fruits and flowers. He sat at one end and John MacBain at the other in the immense dining room of the mansion in Wheeling which had belonged to the Morgans and now belonged to the MacBains. At John’s right Lucinda lifted her blonde head. The fairness of her hair had not dulled in the ten years since Sapphira had been born — Sally, Pierce called her. There had been two others after her, his third son, and then last year, the baby. The light shone down from the great crystal chandeliers and Lucinda’s piled curls gleamed softly. She had rouged her cheeks a very little. He did not approve of it, and yet he had not the heart to reproach her when the touch of color added so much to her calm beauty. She was still slender. At his own right Molly MacBain leaned her elbows on the table. Her arms were bare and white and her elbows dimpled. He knew just how those dimples were placed in the outer curve of the smooth flesh but still the knowledge did not disturb him. His eyes rested with secure pleasure on her rosy face and bright black eyes.
“You’re prettier, than you were ten years ago, Molly,” he said genially.
She laughed at him. “I’ve never been quite pretty enough for you, Pierce,” she said frankly. “But it don’t matter to me as much as it did. Look at John — he’s like a hen ready to lay an egg! That means it’s time for the speech-making.”
Up and down the long table the faces of men and women turned reluctantly toward John MacBain. He had grown heavy and somber in the last ten years and his head was bald. Now he rose under the waiting eyes and stood an instant, gathering them into his power. They submitted, half amused, but a sigh, like the breath of a slow summer breeze, rose and died down. Here and there a pretty woman turned unwillingly from the man with whom she was talking and silence fell.
Pierce looked with affection and amusement at his old friend. Ten years ago he had taken the train to Wheeling in search of John. He had done it for Malvern’s sake. The hungry acres had eaten and drunk his money and were draining him. He knew that if he were to complete his dream and leave the inheritance as a great estate to his sons he would have to find money elsewhere. Malvern was repaying him richly now, thanks to his railroad shares. In less than a year he had repaid John’s loan, and he had insisted on high interest.
This was John’s dinner, John’s house, John MacBain, the vice-president of the greatest railroad in the East. When the president died, John might become president. Pierce was only half listening to the earnest heavy voice. He had heard scores of John’s after dinner speeches, and he always made the same halts between sentences.
“I am grieved to state that our president is not able to be with us this evening,” John was saying. “You may be sure only the most important affairs could have prevented him from taking the chairmanship here at this dinner of the Board of Directors and their ladies, at which I make a report on the new eight-wheel passenger engine of the 2-6-0 type. This engine, number 600, is the largest of the passenger locomotives in this country, and—”
“Oh dear — he’s off on engines,” Molly whispered to Pierce. Their eyes met, laughing. He was occasionally secretly astonished that in the years he had been John’s partner in the railroad business, he had not yielded to Molly. There had been times when he might have yielded to her in a mingled pity for her life and the fullness of his own vitality, and remembering always that John would have said nothing. It had been a temptation again and again. Had Lucinda ever denied herself to him, he might have taken revenge with Molly. But Lucinda, always silent, never denied him anything any more, even when the two younger children were born within three years. His dear little Sally was worth the sapphires hundreds of times over.
“You’re mine,” Pierce declared often to this his favorite child. “I bought you from your mama the first time I saw you.”
“Tell me how it was,” Sally always demanded with relish at the thought of her immense cost.
“Your mama sent me word that she had just finished you, down to the last little fingernail, and would I please come and see how I liked you. So I went into Mama’s room and Georgia brought you in, and you wore a long white dress. I looked at you and I thought you would do. So I said, ‘Well, here’s a pair of sapphire earrings for her two blue eyes, and a sapphire brooch for the rest of her.’”
Lucinda, wearing the sapphires at this moment, caught his eyes and smiled at him. He was aware of her cool and watchful smile whenever he and Molly sat together, and he smiled back at her.
It was one of Lucinda’s qualities never to utter her suspicions of him. But he could feel them, nevertheless. He retaliated by an amused silence equally unbroken. He did not tell her that he never intended to sleep with Molly MacBain. Let her continue to think that he might! He turned his eyes from Lucinda and looked calmly at John, who stood with his thumbs in his white waistcoat, and gazing at his partner’s bearded face, Pierce’s thoughts continued about himself.
When his third son was born he had named him John after John MacBain, but the youngest girl was Lucie, after Lucinda herself. He and Lucinda had decided together that they would not plan on more children, but if they came by accident, they would be welcome. Privately to himself he thought he would like to have seven children, another son and daughter. He was proud of Malvern and proud of the half-grown boys and girls of his family and proud, too, of his wife. Lucinda was a credit to him and she had helped to make Malvern what it was, a gentleman’s home, set in the midst of a thousand acres of rolling rich land. He had added two wings to the house, one on either side, and had thrown out a great porch to the west, where he could watch the sun set over the tops of the mountains beyond his fields. At evening the wide valley lay full of mellow light, and when the sun dropped, the twilight was purple. The deep softness of darkness over his land and the stars over the mountains made the night as living for him as the day. In quiet sleep was renewal. He was a fortunate man. Tom, his brother Tom, was the only thorn. He turned away involuntarily from the thought of Tom.