The Taker

situation. I’d have done anything for you, anything within my means…” He went to hold me-for which my body longed-then seemed to think better of it and pulled back. “Have I lost my mind? What-what are we doing? Haven’t I wronged you enough? What right have I to start up with you again, as though it’s a game of some sort?” Jonathan held his head in his hands. “You must forgive me for my selfishness, my stupidity…”

“You didn’t force me,” I said, trying to calm him. “I wanted this, too.” If only I could take my words back; it had been a mistake to bring up the child, dead and gone. I cursed myself for giving in to my petty nature. I had wanted Jonathan to know I had suffered and to acknowledge his part in the ill that had befallen me, but it had backfired.

“We cannot continue like this. This is the last-complication-I need in my life.” Jonathan rolled away from me and got to his feet. When he saw my shocked and hurt expression, he continued, “Forgive my frankness, dear Lanny. But you know full well I have a family, a wife, an infant daughter, obligations I cannot forsake. I cannot jeopardize their happiness for the sake of a few stolen moments of pleasure with you… And there is no future for us, there cannot be. It would be hurtful and unfair to you for us to continue.”

He doesn’t love me enough to stay with me-the truth cut my heart like a blade. I gulped for air. Anger flamed up inside me at his words. Could he be realizing this only now, after we had started up our illicit affair again? Or was I hurt because he was forsaking me a second time for Evangeline? I must admit the first thought that came to me, as I sat dumbfounded, was of revenge. I can see how scorned women swear themselves over to the devil; in such a moment, the need for revenge is strong but the ability to extract it insufficient. If Lucifer had appeared before me at that second, promising the means to make Jonathan suffer the everlasting torments of hell in exchange for my soul, I would have accepted it, gladly.

Or perhaps there was no need to summon the devil, to draw up the fiery contract, to sign my name in blood. Perhaps I already had.

I was at a loss, now, for how to carry out Adair’s plan, and the realization that I might fail made me sick with fear. I’d thought I’d lure Jonathan to Boston with my love and sexual favors, but I’d failed. Remorse made my lover swear off me, though he promised he would be my friend and benefactor, if need be, forever. I waited to see if Jonathan might change his mind and come back to me, but it became clear as the days progressed that he would not. A visit, I begged him; come to Boston for a visit, but Jonathan resisted. One day his excuse was that his mother couldn’t be trusted not to upset village affairs in his absence, and on another day it was that a complication had arisen that required his attention.

In the end, though, it was always his wife who kept him from agreeing to leave. “Evangeline would never forgive me if I left her alone with my family for a long spell, and she’d never make the trip with the baby,” he said to me, as though he really was at the mercy of his wife and an infant-as though he’d never put his own wishes ahead of theirs, dutiful husband and father that he was. Such excuses might have been believable for another man but not for the Jonathan I knew.

The approaching snows were pressing my departure, however. I sensed that if I remained in St. Andrew for the winter, something terrible would happen. Adair, enraged that I’d defied him, might descend on the town with his hellhounds, and who knew what the blackhearted fiend might do to the innocents of St. Andrew, cut off from the rest of the world? I thought of the stories Alejandro and Dona had told me about Adair’s barbarian past, leading raids on villages and slaughtering inhabitants who resisted. I thought of the maidens he’d raped and the way he’d drugged me and used me for amusement. Moving within Boston society ensured that Adair’s brutal tendencies remained somewhat in check; there was no telling what would happen in an isolated, snowbound town. And I’d be the one responsible for bringing this plague on my neighbors.

I was mulling over my predicament one evening at Daughtery’s, hoping to run into the tenderhearted axman I’d met early in my visit, when Jonathan walked in. I’d seen that expression on his face before: he had not come into Daughtery’s restless for companionship. He was flush with contentment. He’d come from an assignation.

He started at the sight of me, but, having seen me, could hardly leave without acknowledging my presence. He took the stool across the lone table, his back to the fire. “Lanny, what are you doing here? It’s hardly the place for a lady to frequent on her own.”

“Oh, but I’m not a lady, am I?” I said, bitingly, though I regretted my bitterness immediately. “Where else can I go? I can hardly drink in the company of my mother and brother; I can’t abide their disapproving faces. You, at least, can always go back to your big house for a nightcap. Better quality of drink, at any rate. And anyway- shouldn’t you be home at this hour with your wife? You’ve been up to something this evening, I can smell it on you.”

“Considering your position, I wouldn’t think you’d be so quick to judge me,” he said. “All right-I’ll tell you the truth since you demand it from me. I have been with another woman. Someone I was seeing before you returned so unexpectedly. I, too, have a mistress. Anna Kolsted.”

“Anna Kolsted is a married woman.”

He shrugged.

I quivered with fury. “So you haven’t ended your affair with her, even after the pretty speech you gave me the other day?”

“I-I couldn’t leave her as abruptly as that without explaining what had happened.”

“And will you explain that you’ve had a moral epiphany? That you’ve resolved not to see her again?” I demanded, as though I had any right to.

He remained silent.

“Do you never learn, Jonathan? This cannot end well,” I said icily.

Jonathan pressed his mouth into a frown, long-simmering resentment bubbling up. “That seems to be what you always tell me, isn’t it?” Sophia’s name hung in the air between us, unspoken.

“It will end the same. She’ll fall in love with you and want you for herself.” Fear and sorrow rose up in me as it had the day I’d found Sophia in the river. I wouldn’t have thought, after everything I’d been through, that her vision still had the power to affect me-maybe it did because I sometimes wondered if I’d have done well to follow her example. “It’s inevitable, Jonathan. Everyone who knows you wants to own you.”

“Do you speak from experience?”

His sharpness silenced me for a second, but I couldn’t leave it be. I said sarcastically, “Those who have you tend to rue their good fortune. Perhaps you should ask your wife about that. Have you thought how your affair with Mrs. Kolsted will affect Evangeline should she find out?”

Anger overtook Jonathan quickly, like a storm front. He checked over his shoulder to make certain Daughtery was engaged and no one was listening, then gripped my upper arm and drew me close. “For Christ’s sake, Lanny, have pity on me. I’m married to a child. When I took her to our conjugal bed, she cried afterward. Cried. She is frightened of my mother and dumbstruck around my sisters. I have no need for a child, Lanny. I need a woman.”

I pried my arm out of his grip. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“I wish to God I’d never given in to my father and married her. He wanted an heir, that’s all he cared about. Saw a young girl with many breeding years ahead of her and made a deal with old McDougal, as though she was a broodmare.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve no idea of the life I must live now, Lanny. No one to run the business but me. Benjamin is still as helpless as a four-year-old. My sisters are ninnies. And when my father died, well… all his worries were foisted onto my shoulders. This town depends on my family’s fortunes. Do you know how many settlers bought their land with loans secured by my father? One harsh winter, or if they’ve no talent for farming, and they will default on their obligations. I can foreclose, but what use have I for another failing farm? So you’ll forgive me, I pray, for taking a mistress and having some small measure of escape from all my responsibilities.”

I cast my eyes down.

He continued, wild eyed. “You can’t imagine how tempting your offers have been. I’d give up everything to be free of my obligations! But I cannot, and I think you understand why. Not only would my family be lost, but the town, too, would fail. Lives would be ruined. You may have caught me in a moment of weakness when you came back, Lanny, but the past few years have taught me hard lessons. I cannot be so selfish.”

Had he forgotten that he’d once told me he wanted to leave them all behind, his family and his fortune, for me? That he once wished his world was just he and I? A more levelheaded woman would have been happy to see that Jonathan had accepted his responsibilities, and was shouldering obligations that might break a weaker man. I