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  A TENDER TOMORROW. Copyright © 2001 by Carol King. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2459-0

  First eBook Edition: July 2001

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  Contents

  Prologue Cape May, New Jersey 1896

  Chapter One England 1623

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Afterword Cape May, New Jersey 1905

  Prologue

  CAPE MAY, NEW JERSEY

  1896

  For Robert Moffat it is a matter of a goddess, though he is unable in his simplicity of reasoning to conceptualize such a notion. He imagines his goddess, not symbolically as a lodestone—a ruling passion in a blind hierarchy of moldy tradition, but literally. He strokes his great graying beard as he peers across the bay. From his vantage in the topmost room of the Cape May light, where he eats and sleeps, he can see the house, a mansard-roofed smear against the moon. It stands on a spit of land at the tip of a bluff over which the sea darts and swells and sometimes soars, and he watches it till the fog thickens sensibly and the moon fades and then vanishes beneath a wilderness of clouds. Except that he is standing upright, Robert no longer knows what is up or down, east or west. He turns from the tall, many-layered windows that rattle in the wind and lumbers up the circular iron stairway to light the tower lamp and to signal the arrival of the fog with one- two- three long blasts of the horn. What might seem like comfort to some only mourns the emptiness and loss of those in pain. Robert descends and pours himself a large draught of whiskey and lights his pipe. Glancing toward the windows, he is relieved he can no longer see the house. Again, he turns away and seats himself before his fire. He lays his head back. His reflections wander in shadowy, shifting currents of awareness, and he finally comes to a central truth: It is not fitting that a man should see so far or be so high. A sensible man stays in the thick of things, where he knows the world as it really is, not as he wishes it to be. Up here with the sea birds and the angels, a man might imagine all kinds of things—stubborn, wayward things he should not be thinking. A man should not place himself so high.

  Robert has not attended his telescope in some minutes, and he rises tiredly to do so. He appreciates his work and his isolation, but more and more, he finds himself approaching the work, at least, with a fair amount of disinterest. He observes that Delaware Sound, silvered by the soft light from the tower lamp, is clear of sails as far as he can see, then trains his glass north and eastward on the intracoastal waters and southward to the open sea. Robert checks his compass. His headings are correct. He swings the glass and his view sweeps the bay. No sail is visible on the rising, wind-dashed waters. This is good, he tells himself. This is good. No vessel should be a’sea on a night like this. He logs his observations and resumes his seat and his whiskey. Robert gazes into his fire and finally picks up the neat parcel of notes, wrapped in ribbon, which he keeps always on the table near his chair. He does not read them though, preferring this night merely to hold them. Before long he finds himself dozing. And his dreams are of her, the authoress of those pretty testimonies. She comes to him from across the bay, from across time, arms beckoning, and she calls his name, and smiles and laughs and gazes into his eyes in such a loving, knowing fashion that his body trembles and his heart tips in his breast. He allows her love to fill him, for if he tries to grasp it, he will become pained and terrified of its loss. And so his goddess caresses his soul and purifies his senses.

  The horn! He has not signaled the fog for who knows how long. Robert lurches awake. He climbs the circular staircase and pulls the heavy cord attached to the signal. Two and then three times it sounds. Robert descends again into his small parlor. He re-lights his pipe, then leans down, picking up the bundle of letters that had fallen at his feet. He smiles at how quickly we abandon sweetness when duty calls. And Robert Moffat knows his duty. He looks once more toward the windows that overlook the bay. The glass echoes many layers of a fire-lit reflection, and each layer is the same—a ghostly old man with a great graying beard, a smoldering pipe, and a packet of ribbon-tied memories.

  Chapter 1

  Her name was Autumn Thackeray. She was gently bred, tranquilly raised, and always treated with open-handed kindness. Autumn had traveled by coach, a rackety public vehicle, from Philadelphia to Cape May, New Jersey. She had taken her leisure, such as was allowed in the course of her journey, in public rooms, eaten public food, and slept fitfully, sitting up, only when she could no longer keep her lids from falling. And now she stood on a public road, abandoned by even the uncertain protection of her traveling companions and the harsh-mouthed coachman. It was night. The air was washed in blown spume and fog, salty with the sea that thundered somewhere beyond. She glanced down at the trunks, baskets, and boxes scattered at her feet, the aggregation of a life. Her gaze lifted and traveled upward to a series of glowing lights in the distance. That, the coachman had informed her, was her destination, Byron Hall. She drew her muffler more securely around her shoulders, placed her hands firmly into her sable muff and began a brisk walk toward the lights. She had proceeded about halfway between the road and the house, when a woman’s shriek rang out. Autumn stopped, stunned, waiting. Again, she heard the chilling scream. It came from where the lights were. She could not see the house, but her gaze was riveted in that direction. Hearing a third scream, more a screech this time, she bolted toward it. She set aside her fear and the fact that she was running practically blind; if someone was in danger, she must help. She came abruptly to a halt. The house was before her, its massive front door flung open, flooding the darkness with a yawning, bloodless light. A young woman, shawl flying, hair streaming, flew from the house as if she’d been thrown, shrilling curses, more angry it seemed than afraid. “He’s a monster, he is,” she shrieked at Autumn as she hurled herself into the fog. Autumn looked back toward the house. The door hung open. Against the illumination from inside, there appeared the alarming, dark figure of a man. Catching her breath, Autumn stared. The man was tall, of a muscular girth and rough-seeming. He shouted a curse into the night. Autumn swallowed and licked at her lips. They stood, the two figures, he framed in light, she at its fringes. He seemed to glare, though she could not see his eyes, seething in a silhouetted rage, in her direction. She wondered if he noticed her and if she should proceed or wait for an invitation. The thought almost made her laugh. Such a man did not issue invitations. She pressed her hands against the frenzied palpitations of her heart. She had come all this way, had weathered unimaginable discomfort. She would not await an invitation. A decision made, she pressed on, up
to the house. The man at the door loomed menacingly, and the nearer Autumn got to the house the more ruggedly dangerous he appeared. He was dressed in lean-cut riding breeches and a lawn shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up on his forearms. He snapped a riding crop against his long booted leg.

  “Are you Miss Thackeray?” he called to her. The sudden resonance of her name spoken in this place by this odd and terrible man startled her.

  “Yes,” she replied, disallowing her voice to entertain the absurdity of a quiver. She must not appear timid or strained before this proudhearted individual. Throughout the long, humiliating days of the past year, she had poised herself constantly for attack. She lifted her chin, set her shoulders, and approached the house. “I had been in hope that someone would meet me at the coach stop,” she said coolly, with found courage. “My luggage is lying willy-nilly in the road, soaking up all this wet.” The man did not speak. As she mounted the porch steps and stopped before the door, she noted that his perusal of her was unnecessarily intense. “Your question indicates I was expected,” she said. When again the man did not speak, she resumed. “My correspondence stated precisely the time of my arrival.” Impatiently, at his further silence, she looked beyond him into the house. “Might I be admitted? It is awfully damp out here.” In reply, the man nodded tersely. Autumn proceeded past him into the entryway and noted its contrast to the figure of the man who had—for lack of a better phrase—greeted her. The hallway was a spacious chamber with a thick gold-patterned carpet, muted wallpaper of a tasteful yellow hue, and a glimmering crystal chandelier that lit a grandly curved rosewood staircase. Spanning the height and breadth of one wall near the entry was an oil painting of a distant tall ship heeling on a gold-tinted sea. The painting’s carved wooden frame caught the light of the candles above. “It is a Hassam,” she said reverently.

  “One of his seascapes,” the man offered. “He comes down now and then to paint our bay.” Autumn looked at the man who seemed so abruptly civilized. He swung the great door closed and unknotted the scarf at his neck. He used it to wipe unceremoniously at his forehead. She immediately amended her judgment.

  “You’re young,” he observed.

  “Some might say so.”

  “Not twenty, I’d wager.”

  “Nearly that.” She lifted her chin a notch. “In any event, I wonder that my age is your business, sir. Though you know who I am, you’ve not identified yourself to me.” A smile threatened at the corner of the man’s lips, but did not reach the depths of his onyx gaze.

  “Insolent, too,” he said. “And you recognize art.” He swiped once again at his forehead, displacing a tangle of rude black curls that hung loosely, and at the moment, glistened with perspiration. To Autumn’s horror, he tossed the offending cloth onto a brilliantly polished center table and extended his paw of a hand. “I’m Cain Byron.”

  “How do you do,” she managed, making her own hand available. “Is it Doctor Byron?” The man nodded. This then was the person with whom she had so daintily corresponded for the past two months on the subject of his mother’s need of a companion. From his letters, Autumn had formed a very different picture. She had envisioned an aging man, an elegant and learned man, tidy in his habits and appearance—in short, a doctor. She averted her eyes, hoping her new employer would not perceive the disappointment, the disapproval, and the despondency in her heart.

  Still grasping her hand, he said, “Come with me.” Autumn found herself being towed along, nearly stumbling, down a lengthy corridor and into a room closed off by a pair of thick pocket doors. Once inside the room, having gained her balance and her hand, she noted that, though lit only by a flickering hearth fire and a few candles, the room was cozy and decorated with a lightness of hand. The hearth, which she could see plainly, was of white painted plaster and gold leaf. The mantel was crowded with a display of framed photographs, probably of family members. The walls were papered with a deep green neo-Grecian design and a tasteful ceiling border in the popular “Plume” pattern. A plush Oriental carpet had been placed in the center of a polished, parqueted floor. Autumn took in the outlines of side chairs, slipper stools, and a round center table draped with layers of velvet and lace. Her drifting gaze halted at the unexpected sight of a figure lying huddled on a couch outside the circlet of light provided by the fire. It moved as Autumn stepped toward it.

  “Who is it?” asked a voice chafed with dryness.

  “It is me, Mother,” said Cain Byron. His voice was edged with annoyance. “Where is Mrs. Inman?”

  “She . . . went to get me . . . something, I suppose. Oh, how the hell do I know?” Autumn’s eyes widened. She glanced at the doctor, but he seemed unfazed by his mother’s rude language. For all the coarseness of her speech, there was a vague, frail quality in her voice. Her head rolled to one side as though she had been fatigued with the effort of speech, and she exhaled with a soft, audible sigh. She was swathed in a thick draping of woolen fabric.

  “How long have you been alone?” Cain Byron persisted. Beneath the heavy blanketing, the woman might have shrugged. Dr. Byron uttered a curse. “Stay with her,” he ordered Autumn and strode from the room, slapping the riding crop against his thigh. Unsure of what ailed the woman—Dr. Byron’s correspondence indicated that she had a “nervous disorder”—Autumn knelt beside her.

  “Can I do something for you?” she asked uncertainly. There seemed so much that might be done for her. “Mightn’t we untangle some of these blankets?” Receiving no answer, Autumn took the initiative. She began to adjust the coil of woolen fabric that entrapped the woman. Looking down into her face, Autumn saw that the woman was not old, middle-aged perhaps, no more than fifty, her face unlined, even pretty, though pale and sunken around her eyes and cheeks. Her head drifted from side to side.

  “So sleepy,” she whispered. “Always so . . . damnably . . . sleepy.” She sounded more defeated than ill.

  Abruptly the room erupted with light and sound. The doctor had returned. He carried a lantern and was followed by a heavy-breasted woman dressed in a prim cap and an apron, her hands folded before her.

  “And there she was,” Cain Byron was saying, “lying there with no comfort, no solace.” Mrs. Inman’s manner was as starched as her apron and cap.

  “If I don’t get up them preserves, doctor, the fruit’ll rot in the bin—”

  “The fruit be damned, woman,” he returned. “Look at her!” He directed his light toward his mother’s form. “Is this the way you care for your mistress?”

  “I beg an apology,” the woman returned in a rolling Irish lilt that sounded not in the least apologetic, “but since you run off Alma Louise and all the other girls, I’m just the one here—”

  “By the gods, Careem Inman,” Cain interrupted, “if this happens again, I shall dismember you and toss you into the sea, you blathering Celtic witch.” Autumn’s mouth fell open, but Mrs. Inman simply rolled her eyes and moved to her charge. Helping her to her feet, she shepherded the invalid from the room. “You,” he said to Autumn, “follow me.” He led her to another room, which seemed to be the doctor’s private parlor. This room was plushly decorated in the Turkish mode, with deep jewel-like colors. Chairs and couches were covered in thick, tufted crimson velvet, and heavy draperies were tasseled with gold fringe. A brass and green Tiffany floor lamp shed a dark emerald wash over the room. Autumn supposed the effect was meant to be restful. A small fire crackled on a hearth that was made of black marble. Above it was the startling sight of a framed portrait of an older, more handsomely dressed Cain Byron glaring into the room. Dr. Byron noted the direction of Autumn’s stare. “My late father,” he said, then directed Autumn to seat herself in a chair made, oddly, of animal horns. She did so hesitantly. She watched as he lit a slim cigar. He did not sit down, but paced the room like a restive leopard.

  “You must understand, Miss Thackeray, if you are to acquire this position in my household, there will be no allowance for laxity or negligence. My mother is very ill. Her m
edicines must be administered faithfully, and she must be watched constantly. I shall brook no delinquency.” The doctor bent a cutting gaze on Autumn. His words had come, she thought, not so much out of loving concern for his mother, but out of an apparent desire to control his environment. And he had said “if.” Had they not corresponded these last months and had they not agreed ultimately that she would be hired? “My mother,” the doctor was telling her, “suffers, as I mentioned in my letters, from a nervous disorder. She is under the care of my colleague, Dr. Winslow Beame, a most capable specialist in women’s problems. He practices in New York, but has kindly deigned to accommodate me in this case. We were at Harvard together, Win and I, and he is a most congenial fellow.” Autumn’s pale brows drew together. She wondered what the man’s personality had to do with his competence as a doctor of medicine. Still, amending her expression, she asked about Mrs. Byron’s treatment.

  “A combination of medication and complete rest,” Dr. Byron answered. “She must be absolutely shielded from any disturbance of body or mind. If you are to be placed in the position of her caretaker, you must, Miss Thackeray, be prepared to devote yourself to that purpose. Can you promise that?”

  Autumn nodded. She needed no second thoughts to make such a vow. In shielding Mrs. Byron from the harshness of the world, she would also be shielding herself. She glanced up at her inquisitor. He lifted a dark brow in anticipation of her response.

  “It will be my pleasure to protect your mother from the cares of the world, Dr. Byron. I will enfold her as I would my own dear mother,” she said, adding hastily, “if I should be fortunate enough to obtain this position.” In truth, it galled Autumn to make that qualification. Had she not traveled all this way for that very purpose? Had he not agreed in his last letter to hire her? Manipulative exhibitions of power had always angered her. She dimpled her most appealing smile, however, and lowered golden lashes over an amber gaze. Autumn needed this job.