Chapter 10
Ten
Susan already knew what she faced on the second day of her life in the first half of the century. It was the day before the wedding, and the Abbotts didn’t do things halfway. In about three hours everything would start, and she probably wouldn’t have a moment to herself until?—
Until when? Until she died? Is that what it would take to send her back to her own time? To stop this dream which was rapidly turning into a nightmare?
The rehearsal was set for noon at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, followed by a huge supper for wedding party members, relatives and anyone else they could drag in. And then tomorrow, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Tallulah Abbott would marry Edward Marsden. And she’d be dead before midnight.
How had Lou died? Was it in a train wreck? What had once been an unimportant detail now loomed very large indeed. If Lou Abbott died in a train, then Susan Abbott had every intention of driving a car wherever she went.
Hattie was watching her closely, her brown eyes suspicious. “What can I get you for breakfast, Miss Lou?”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“Gotta keep your strength up. You got a busy day today. Let me make you some scrambled eggs and toast.”
Susan shuddered. “Thanks, Hattie, but I don’t think I could manage to choke it down. Maybe just some strawberry yogurt if we have some?”
“Yogurt? What’s that?”
Good God, they didn’t even have yogurt in 1949! There was no reasonable answer she could come up with. “How about cornflakes?” she guessed. Surely they had cornflakes back then.
“Miss Tallulah, you’ve always hated cereal. You know milk gives you gas. What is going on with you, child?”
“I don’t know,” Susan said truthfully. “I really don’t know.
” Hattie was watching her with both doubt and wisdom in her eyes, and for a brief moment Susan was tempted to tell her the truth.
Maybe Hattie would tell Lou’s parents, and they’d lock her up in an insane asylum, but at least she wouldn’t marry the wrong man.
And at least she wouldn’t die in a train wreck.
However, she might spend her days in a straitjacket, assuming they had such things, which wasn’t much of an alternative. But then, Hattie didn’t look like the type to rat on her.
“I need...” she began, when the doorbell rang.
“You just wait right here. Miss Lou. I’ll get rid of whoever it is, and you can tell me all about it.”
But Susan had already chickened out. “That’s all right,” she said brightly. “You’re in the midst of something. I’ll get the door.” And she slipped out of the kitchen before she could change her mind.
The Abbott house was large and rambling, and she hadn’t yet discovered where the hunt door was, so by the time she found it, whoever was waiting had stopped ringing the bell and had begun pounding on the door.
She yanked the door open, not surprised to be confronted by Neddie Marsden in a towering rage. “Stop making such a racket,” she said calmly. “You’ll wake the entire family.”
He didn’t move. He stood in the doorway, staring at her, his handsome face slack-jawed with shock, though she couldn’t figure out why.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
Susan had never responded particularly well to men having temper tantrums, and she wasn’t going to let a petty tyrant like Neddie Marsden browbeat her. “Go away, Neddie,” she said wearily. “I’m not in the mood for this so early in the morning....”
He caught her aim in a painful grip, pushing her into the house, and kicked the door shut behind him. He slammed her against the wall, pressing his bulk against her, and his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her upper arm. His nostrils were flaring and veins stood out in his temples.
“What’s going on with you?” he demanded in a furious whisper. “What the hell do you think you’re wearing? You look like a damned tomboy! You get your fanny upstairs and put on a dress, fix your hair and your makeup, and then you come back down and behave yourself.”
She glared up at him, uncowed. “I’ll dress any way I please. No one’s coming over for hours, you weren’t supposed to be here, and I have every right?—”
He caught her other arm, as well, and shook her, hard enough that her head slammed against the wall behind her.
“You have no rights. You’re going to be my wife, and I expect you to behave like a lady at all times.
I won’t have you shaming me, Tallulah. I thought you were past all that wildness. I thought you’d grown up.”
“What if I don’t want to grow up?” She was proud of how even her tone of voice was. She didn’t want to admit it, but pompous old Neddie Marsden was scaring her. Maybe because right now he wasn’t old at all, he was young and strong and mean.
“You don’t have the choice.”
“What if I don’t want to marry you?”
The expression on his face was absolutely terrifying. Her arms were numb beneath his punishing grip, and she couldn’t move, she could only stand there, frozen.
“You’re marrying me all right, Tallulah,” he said in an icy voice. “You have no choice in the matter, I thought that was understood. I’d hate to have to threaten you...”
“You already are.” She glared up at him, but her voice wavered.
“We’ve been through all this. Look on it as a simple business agreement I get the wife and hostess I need, a blue-blooded Abbott to assure my place in society. In return, your father’s estate is secure, and he doesn’t have to worry about prosecution for war profiteering.”
“You were the war profiteer, not my father,” she shot back, remembering Jack’s words.
“Hell, Tallulah, we both were. There’s a lot of money to be made during wars, and we were smart enough to make it Who do you think pays for those pretty dresses you hate wearing, for your new car, for this lavish wedding?
Not even the Abbotts could survive the depression with their fortunes intact, though your father put up a good front But he needed me. And in return, I get you.”
“And what do I get out of the deal?” she demanded bitterly.
“I don’t think anyone really cares,” Neddie said softly. “You’ll have an extravagant life-style and the respect due my wife, but those things never mattered to you, did they?”
“No,” she said. “They never did.”
“And then there’s your little sister. You wouldn’t want to see her shamed, now would you?
If your father was disgraced, her life would be ruined, and she wouldn’t even have the cushion of money to help her.
But we don’t have to worry about that, now, do we?
You’re going to marry me, and you know it No more disrespectful behavior, no more inappropriate clothing.
And no more Jack McGowan.” The fingers on her arms tightened still further, and she couldn’t control her little cry of pain.
“I don’t want him sniffing around you. I might have to do something about it, and you wouldn’t want to get me angry, now would you, Tallulah? ”
I’m not Tallulah, she wanted to cry, but she didn’t. “You’re hurting me.”
“I don’t care.”
. “You’ll leave bruises. Do you want the wedding guests to know that you hurt me? And that you enjoy it?”
He considered it for a moment savoring the notion, and Susan’s blood went cold. In a moment of blinding clarity she thought she knew how Tallulah had died, and it wasn’t in a train wreck It had been at tire brutal hands of Edward Marsden.
He released her then, and she fell back against the wall, strangely weak. “Go change, Tallulah,” he said in his mellifluous voice. “Fix your hair, put on some makeup. Take your time. I expect you to be a credit to me, and I’m prepared to wait.”
She stared at him. He was a big man, though not much taller than Tallulah’s impressive height He had cold, piggy eyes and a cruel smile, and she realized with a start that he wasn’t that old. Probably not even thirty, and yet old in the harsh ways of the world.
She pushed away from the wall, and he stepped back, smugly sure he had her beaten. “You’ll have a long wait,” she said.
“I’m patient,” he said. “And I always win.”
She believed him. She remembered the ancient Ned Marsden with his cowed second wife and his milky eyes, still radiating power even in his late seventies. It wouldn’t do to underestimate him.
She turned to leave him, and his voice followed her. “I’m counting on you, Tallulah. You wouldn’t want to see me lose my temper.”
. He was right about that much. He could lose his temper all he wanted, once she was out of reach. She said nothing, feeling his cold eyes on her back as she mounted the stairs, only to have Lou’s father almost barrel into her in his anxiety to get down.
“What have you done?” he demanded in a furious whisper. “You haven’t made him angry, have you?”
She looked at the man who raised her mother. He was a frightened, selfish little man, ready to sacrifice his own daughter to keep himself safe.
She didn’t bother to disguise the contempt in her face. “I’m sure you’ll fix everything.” She moved past him, her back straight.
His voice followed her. “For God’s sake, change those awful clothes! You’ll ruin everything.”
She was shaking by the time she got back in her bedroom, shaking so hard she collapsed on the tufted slipper chair.
Outside the sun was shining, inside she was still desperately cold.
She wrapped her arms around her body, rocking back and forth.
There had to be some way out of this mess.
Without sacrificing her sister. Mother. Whatever.
God, she felt like something out of Chinatown. The thought should have amused her, but right now her sense of humor seemed to have vanished. She felt trapped, smothered, with no way out Even Jack McGowan, for all his dire warnings, hadn’t offered any possibility of escape.
There had to be a way out. There was a reason she was here, or at least was dreaming she was here, and it couldn’t be to repeat history. That much was absolutely certain.