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She’d known about the girl in Lubbock It would have been fine if Ethan had chosen to keep her and be discreet But she was in the family way, and Ethan had suddenly developed roirl Mary would be scandalized No more could she sit in the lordly tier at the opera house, peering down at all the little people looking back up at her, envying her life They’d regard her with pity Pity, Mary White could not abide She’d fought with Ethan, pleaded with him even--Mary never pleaded, and even now, in her bed ith the ainst the distasteful o to the lawyers first thing and draw up the papers She would be well cared for as long as she kept her mouth shut and didn’tthe object of gossip
Ethan always took a glass of sherry in the evening to cal the sherry, as always To this, Mary added the arsenic they kept on hand for the field mice who tried to make a home in the root cellar In the dark of the bedroo chair with a volume of John Donne’s poetry while her husband writhed and shook on the bed, one clawed hand reaching toward her as she cales At twenty-four, Mary White beca with everything of value andsound roused Mary fro, alert, until she was satisfied that it was only the wind and rain lashing the bungalow
It was on a storht that she’d first reat Theosophist Madame Blavatsky speak at Cooper Union Mary was captivated by the Russian lady, with her ideas of ever-evolving mankind, of union with the divine and the spirit real in exchange for esoteric knowledge "You will meet a man ill offer you a door into another world," Mada a downpour in which she ithout a hanso blue eyes offered her a ride His name was John Hobbes, and he shared her fascination with the mystical He was descendant, he confessed, of a holy tribe called the Brethren, favored by God, and had been chosen a them to fulfill their sacred mission on earth He showed her wonders she could not explain and shared knowledge she never dreamed possible He converted her to his faith and pro path, for she would be his Lady Sun
It was this sense of destiny, of self-importance, that joined Mary and John They were above all rules They existed on a higher plane and for a higher purpose Before her adventures in the spirit world, Mary had been haunted by occasional doubts about what she’d done to Ethan But with John’s help she saw that it had the sense of rightness about it, a plan preordained: Had she not punished Ethan’s wickedness and inherited his money, she would not have been able to help John in his ht and ht in his bed
A floorboard creaked in the house, but Mary was only vaguely aware of it; she was lost to her reverie She thought back on John showing her the old book with its eleven offerings, explaining what he meant to do--what he had been chosen to do At first, she’d admit, she’d had reservations Fear, even But he’d kissed her sweetly, then fiercely, overpowering her in the way she liked, the way she craved, and she was utterly his He was a golden god And she, Mary White, was his sacred consort The Beast would rise The world would burn A new society would evolve fro and queen She, little Mary White, who ca And when John saw that he would be taken, a sacrifice like a lesser one two thousand years before, she’d followed his instructions, paying off the guards and a driver, secreting his body through New York’s cobblestone streets in the night She’d had hie, and, as pro ball or neners, paying the taxes every h she’d had to spend down her fortune and live in a shack to do it He’d been very specific about that, and when she’d asked why, he’d never answered It was the one mystery he would not share with her
The floorboards groaned loudly
"Who is it? Who’s there?" She drew the bedsheets up to her neck "I’ ca havoc with a shutter It was definitely inside, definitely a floorboard Oh, why had she told Eleanor she could go out tonight?