Grahame, Lucia Page 9

  As for my future husband, I hardly knew Sir Anthony— and he knew me not at all. But shallow as my knowledge of him might be, one thing I did know: I knew exactly the expression that would appear on his face were he ever to glimpse the paintings which had delivered me into his hands. I had already seen that look once.

  Now my whole life would become one unremitting effort to keep the dangerous truth hidden from him even as we shared the greatest intimacies that can exist between two people.

  In such stony soil how could love take root? Already every impulse of mine to be open and yielding and generous had been crushed. I could never afford to drop my guard again.

  It was just as well. For what if I had fallen in love with Sir Anthony before Poncet had sprung his trap? What if my heart already belonged to a man who would surely turn from me with disgust and condemnation were he to plumb my secrets?

  I would do everything in my power to keep that knowledge from him forever. But I was hardly confident that I could really manage this, and to think of having surrendered myself to him completely and then to fail in covering up my sins! The agony of his rejection would be insupportable.

  No, he must never have my heart; this was my best protection. This way no matter what happened, he could never really hurt me. Even if a day came when all his esteem for me turned to ashes, at least I would not have to suffer the anguish of being coldly cast aside by a man I worshiped, a man who would meet Poncet’s price to protect his own name from scandal, but who would never forgive his wife’s deception. I thought with a shudder of the unbending Marquess of Londonderry, who, years ago, upon discovering love letters from his wife to another man, had informed her, in a note, “Henceforth we do not speak,” and had not violated that edict since.

  Yes, it was a good thing that I had never allowed myself to fall blindly in love with Anthony Camwell.

  In the midst of all my turmoil, this was my surest consolation.

  The days passed, and I grew calmer. I assured myself that a mere portion of the generous allowance my husband had already promised me, so that the new Lady Camwell might be suitably gowned and able to indulge every whim, would easily keep Poncet satisfied. As long as I was careful to give nothing away, my secret would be safe.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Still I could not always keep the panic down. Sir Anthony returned to Paris in July. When I opened my door to him, I watched his eager smile fade. He said nothing as his searching gray eyes inspected me. I submitted to his gaze, half fearful that my guilty secret was emblazoned on my face.

  “You’ve become very thin,” was all he said.

  His voice was noncommittal. Was it an accusation of some kind? Had he already begun to discern my myriad imperfections?

  “It’s all the excitement,” I stammered with a false laugh. “I’ve hardly had time to eat!”

  Still he did not smile.

  I shivered, as if awaiting a verdict.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he asked at last, still in that level, unsmiling voice.

  With another little gasp of chagrined laughter at having kept him upon the landing, I opened the door wider. He stepped inside.

  I followed him into the drawing room. It still had a few touches of the bold color with which Frederick’s taste had invested it: on the vermillion blanket which was draped over the chaise longue to hide its worn upholstery sat the plump yellow silk pillow which had lain behind my head when I’d posed as Frederick’s wanton and inviting Odalisque.

  Now she belonged to Marcel Poncet.

  I shivered again and tried to shepherd my thoughts into less perilous channels.

  Sir Anthony arranged himself elegantly at one end of the sofa. I placed myself at the other, keeping a distance between us. I was intensely aware of him. Soon I would be all too well acquainted with that lean, graceful body.

  Still he said nothing.

  I knew I ought to be overflowing with a lover’s chatter, offering him tea or coffee and madeleines, and babbling about my trousseau. Again I had the feeling that he was waiting for something. But I could not speak.

  The tense silence pricked at me like a thousand needles. I began to understand how guilty prisoners could be driven to make desperate confessions—-without even a finger having been laid upon them.

  Had Poncet gone back on his word? Was it possible that Sir Anthony already knew?

  I met his eyes more fully and saw, to my relief, that the expression in them was not accusatory. It was thoughtful, grave, expectant.

  The prolonged silence was becoming as unendurable as a tickle. I could feel myself weakening.

  But I lacked the courage to lay myself open and to ask for his help. Instead I equivocated.

  “I’m a little… ,” I began tremulously.

  He waited.

  “Yes?” he prodded me at last.

  “A little… frightened,” I said in a whisper.

  “Frightened?” He didn’t laugh or make light of my admission, as Frederick surely would have. “Of me?”

  “Oh no! Never of you! It’s just that…”

  Here I broke off again. He waited patiently but offered a small, encouraging nod to help me onward.

  “It’s just that I fear I may not be up to the demands of such a different kind of life,” I said finally.

  “What demands would those be?” he asked in his calm, unruffled way.

  “Oh, you know…”

  “But I don’t. At any rate, I don’t know what you have in mind. Tell me what you mean, Fleur.”

  It was so strange to hear him call me Fleur, after having been Madame Brooks to him for so long. Fleur. He said it as if he loved it on his tongue.

  I felt myself floundering.

  “Ah, well… living up to your family’s expectations, for example. I’m sure I’m not at all the sort of woman they would like to see you married to!”

  “My family!” he exclaimed with a short, rather harsh burst of laughter. “You already know Neville, and he adores you. There’s no one else, really, except for my mother, but she lives at a safe distance; I really don’t think she’ll give you any trouble.”

  The edge in his voice when he said this did not soothe my vague uneasiness.

  Then he added, “Are you quite sure that it is only my family you’re worried about? What about yours? You are English, aren’t you? And you’ve never said a word about them. Why is that?”

  He issued this challenge in a gentle, encouraging tone, as if to assure me that I had nothing to fear by revealing all.

  I licked my lips nervously.

  “I really have no family to speak of,” I said at last.

  His continued silence drove me on.

  “I… ah… I was raised by my grandmother. She was French, but she lived in England. Her name was Emilie Deslignères.”

  I don’t know why I felt compelled to tell him her name. Perhaps it allowed me to imagine that I was being heroically straightforward about my ignoble origins. But of course the name could mean nothing to him. She’d been notorious in our own little village, of course, mainly because she had never attempted to hide her scarlet past, but she was hardly one of the great scandals of her era.

  “Deslignères,” repeated Sir Anthony in that almost flawless accent which I loved because it made him seem less… English. “What a beautiful name. And your parents?” he then pressed softly.

  “There’s nothing to tell, really. My mother died when I was born. My father… went away.” I swallowed painfully. “His name was Hastings. That was my name, too. Caroline Hastings. But my grandmother didn’t like it. So she called me Fleur and gave me her last name.”

  Sir Anthony looked amused. “That was good of her,” he said, as if he were trying to keep fond laughter from spilling into his voice. “I like it better.”

  I smiled back edgily.

  With a sudden air of restless impatience, Sir Anthony stood up and began to pace the carpet in his slow, measured way.

  Finally he stopped and stoo
d before me.

  “Fleur,” he said, “if you think your family connections— or anything else—could possibly affect the way I feel about you, then you still have no idea how much I love you.”

  “I just… don’t want to embarrass you,” I murmured awkwardly.

  He dropped to his knees and took one of my half-clenched hands in his.

  “How could you embarrass me?” he whispered. “I know there are differences between us. I know that our opinions and attitudes and the ways we are accustomed to thinking about things will sometimes clash. I know your life has been very, very different from mine. But what do these things matter? If we love each other, how can anything drive us apart?”

  I stared back at him hopelessly. Never had I felt so cut off from him by my secret; yet never had I felt such a rush of warm emotion for him. If he had taken me in his arms at that moment, I might have told him everything.

  But instead he released my hand, stood up again, and wandered to the window. He lingered there for a moment Or two, staring down at the busy street.

  When at last he turned around, his face still wore that grave and thoughtful expression. But now he seemed more serious than ever.

  “Forgive me, Fleur,” he said. “I never meant to ride roughshod over your reservations. If you have doubts about the step we are about to take, if you are uncertain about your love for me, or whether you truly want this marriage, you have only to say so. There is no need for us to rush into anything.”

  I stared back at him, mute.

  “But if you love me as I love you, what is there to fear? All that matters is what we feel for each other. Surely you know, better than anyone, that love will always adapt and evolve and recreate itself to meet every problem. With that star to guide us, how can we go wrong?”

  A thin streak of bitterness shot through me. What did he know about love? He had never been married. He had never been assailed by the demons in whose face love is as helpless and impotent as a newborn child. Love hadn’t saved my daughter. Love hadn’t saved Frederick.

  But at the same time I knew he was promising me something extraordinary. He was telling me that he was prepared to be flexible and forgiving, that he knew there were ways in which we were certain to disappoint each other and fall sadly short of each other’s expectations, and that he believed we could still go on loving despite them, that we could reinvent love over and over to meet every new challenge, that it would grow and flourish, not wither and die in the first winter frost.

  He was assuring me that all my unspoken fears were groundless.

  It was a beautiful illusion. How I longed to believe in it; if only experience hadn’t taught me that it was dangerous and false.

  He was still standing against the window. The light behind him made a halo of his fair hair.

  “Are you ready to love me, Fleur?” he asked.

  Perhaps all my sleepless nights and anxiety had made me slightly delirious. All I knew was that for a moment he seemed to exude both calm assurance and an almost hypnotic power.

  He was waiting for my answer.

  I knew that if I said no, that I was not ready for love, he would not abandon me; he would, to use his own words, adapt.

  But the force that seemed to radiate from him, almost against his will, was irresistible.

  How could I, impoverished, exhausted, and desperate, resist everything that had combined to drive me into his arms?

  “Yes,” I said.

  PART TWO: 1892-1893

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The wedding was carried off with a minimum of pomp and circumstance. Not even Sir Anthony’s mother or her second husband, Lord Whitstone, came to Paris for the occasion. They excused themselves on the grounds that Lady Whitstone was in poor health. When I remarked to Sir Anthony that I hoped his mother’s illness was not a serious one, his rather dry laugh and terse reply suggested that he regarded neither her absence nor her illness as cause for concern.

  Marguerite Sorrel was my matron of honor; Lord Marsden, the best man. Although Neville Marsden was a generation older than Sir Anthony, who was barely two years my senior, it was plain to see how close was the bond between them. Always kindly and urbane in his manner, and blessed with a wit that generated an atmosphere of smiling conviviality among all the members of the wedding party, Lord Marsden had that sublime talent of eliciting one’s best self.

  But I noticed even his humor take on a slight edge when he made a few casual asides to Sir Anthony about the absent Lady Whitstone. These gave me an alarming picture of my new mother-in-law. I gathered from the one or two oblique remarks not meant for my ears that she was cold, ruthlessly willful, and outspoken to the point of rudeness. I was very glad that she had remarried and that we would not be required to share Sir Anthony’s home with her.

  Théo Valory’s tongue was not as suave as Lord Marsden’s. The hotheaded painter was susceptible to fits of surliness and had recently exhibited an unfortunate tendency to envy and disparage his actress wife’s popular successes, which far outshone his own. Unfortunately, his defects of character were never more pronounced than when he had the opportunity to rub shoulders with the beau monde he detested and to imbibe unlimited quantities of good wine.

  I sympathized with Théo, whose abilities deserved more recognition than he had yet received. He had all of Frederick’s technical skill and more, but he refused to abandon certain idiosyncrasies of style which would have shocked Frederick’s wealthy patrons had Théo allowed Frederick to show his works to them. He used color in deliberately jolting ways; he violently and intentionally distorted perspective; and he painted only scenes of common life, completely lacking in grandeur. He prided himself in his refusal to pander to anyone’s taste and yet could not bear to risk rejection and ridicule by exposing his work outside his own poverty-stricken but aesthetically impeccable coterie.

  How he and Frederick used to fight! The case of Paul Gauguin—who had virtually abandoned his wife and children to answer his muse—was a case in point, Frederick declaring that any man who’d do such a thing was a soulless, unfeeling cad and could never create great art. Only a man who could make such a choice, retorted Théo, was capable of greatness!

  I was enormously fond of Théo. Yet I so hated to see his understandable dissatisfactions express themselves in hurtful ways that I had half dreaded his presence at the wedding reception. My fears were realized when one of the guests commented upon the enormous popularity of the play in which Marguerite had recently appeared, a frivolous and delightful farce. Marguerite’s performance was its chief attraction, but far from enjoying her triumph, Théo had lately begun to imply that the roles she took were proof of her limitations. If she was serious about her art, he said, she would choose to hone her mediocre abilities by performing in the more demanding realm of the experimental, avant-garde, and generally insolvent little theaters he loved.

  “Ah yes,” said Théo in response to the guest’s remark, “La Sorrel has such a knack for playing to the indiscriminate taste of the masses.”

  Marguerite was far too polite to counter this in public, but I saw her lovely mouth tighten. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw, too, that Sir Anthony had stiffened slightly. But when he spoke, his tone was mild.

  “She is greatly admired, isn’t she,” he said, and then continued with consummate politeness, “however, I am not quite so ready to condemn the popular taste as ‘indiscriminate’ as you are, Monsieur Valory. Surely you must agree that the ability to appeal to theater-goers of every station is a sign of the greatest artistry. It requires enormous talent to touch such a wide audience, to illuminate not only our differences but our common hopes, desires, and fears. Your wife, Monsieur Valory, is brilliant.”

  Marguerite, although hardly unfamiliar with adulation, looked as if she might burst into tears of gratitude. But Théo gave Sir Anthony an insolent, disbelieving stare and then shifted his glance to me. I knew him well enough to read the silent message in his eyes: How could you have married such an insu
fferable prig? You—who were wed to my dearest friend? I could imagine only too vividly how he would pillory the baronet later on at his local brasserie, among his own circle, which until today had been mine as well.

  Although I detested Théo’s gratuitous jab at his wife and although the views which Sir Anthony had expressed were precisely the ones I myself held, I found, to my acute discomfort, now that Théo had been challenged, my sympathies were entirely with the artist.

  Lord Marsden had turned toward Théo.

  “I am not acquainted with your work,” he said, “but Madame Br—my cousin Fleur, whose taste and judgment I respect unreservedly, tells me that it is astonishing, that it startles the eye into new ways of seeing. I have been hoping I might prevail upon you to let me see it for myself. When may I visit your studio?”

  Théo flushed. Frederick and I had often begged him to let us bring Lord Marsden to his studio, and Théo had always refused, claiming that he was loath to take advantage of his friend’s success. But never had he been approached so directly. I held my breath.

  “Any time you like,” responded Théo in a sullen tone. “But I warn you, I’m nothing like Brooks.”

  Sir Anthony and I spent the night in his suite at the opulent Hotel Continental. I dared to hope that the web of expansive goodwill which Lord Marsden had so artfully spun around the wedding party would cling for at least a short while afterward, long enough to cocoon me through my wedding night. But among the congratulatory cards that filled our room was a note to me from Marcel Poncet telling me that he now found himself obliged to double the price of his silence.

  There went my hope of being able to manage my allowance cleverly enough to avoid raising suspicion.

  My spirits shriveled like leaves in November.

  Until now Sir Anthony had refrained from ever seeking more than a chaste kiss or an innocent embrace. I had been grateful for this, although at the same time it had exacerbated my sense of guilt. Even passion could not drive him to throw his principles to the winds. He had always treated me like a lady.