Black Silk (22 page)

They went through the parlor. He held the door, his expression a rigid mask of indignation. She tried to ignore his anger; there was nothing she could do about it. Meanwhile, as she stepped down into the tack room, she became aware of the weight of her skirts, of the knot where it was tied in back. The knotted fabric bobbed over her buttocks, sliding and shifting no matter how straight she carried herself. Graham reached to hold back the clutter of straps, and Submit acutely regretted her lack of hoops. They usually kept him, kept anyone, at more of a distance. Now, at every doorway, at every pause in their progression, he was close enough that his legs brushed up against the bulkily tied skirts.

At the archway to the stables, he wouldn’t take his hat. He went down the last three steps in a pique.

Then, right there before her, he suddenly turned and looked up. “Why? You damn well want to—”

She blinked. “I want to do a lot of things,” she replied, “but I’m not willing to pay the price.” She stepped down the last step, again offering his hat.

This time he took it as he said, “All right. I understand not liking others’ disapproval—”

“It’s not that.
I
wouldn’t approve.”

“If you want to do something, you simply give yourself permission.”

“Like dirty pictures?”

He was taken aback. “Exactly like dirty pictures.”

“My dear earl.” She gave him a look of pure, indulgent forbearance. “I might like to live off cake, but I don’t. It’s not good for me. I wouldn’t have done the pictures, no matter how much the idea appealed to me: They made you feel terrible.”

“They made me feel wonderful, you idiot. I bloody
loved
doing them.” His horse, tied to a ring on the wall, shied at the sound of his raised voice.

“Then hated yourself for them later on.”

“I didn’t—” She looked at him levelly. “All right,” he said, “I did regret them a little. But only because—” His face drew into a frown that drew into deeper furrows, almost a grimace of pain. “Because,” he said soberly, “Henry hated me for them. They became to him the final proof that everything I ever did was wrong.”

“Oh, dear.” Some of Submit’s irritation abated, as she realized, whether Graham did or not, that he was speaking of how important Henry had been to him. In a much gentler voice, she put this into words: “You wanted Henry’s respect.”

“Well, yes.” He gave her a funny look. “Just a little would have been nice.”

“Surely Henry gave it to you for other things.”

“No, madam, he didn’t.” He turned away, going over to untie the horse.

“He came to you when you were sick.”

“That’s not the same thing as respect.”

“It’s not the same thing as approval. But it was a way of acknowledging that he cared: I think Henry was sorry he couldn’t approve of you.”

He turned his back completely, adjusting the stirrup. “Bloody big of him.” He put his foot in the tread, about to swing up.

“Graham—” It made her warm to hear his given name aloud out her own mouth, but she suddenly needed it, wanted it.

From his awkward position, he looked around.

“I thought about what you said the other day.” She genuinely wanted to offer him something. “You were at least partially right. Henry hated anything that reminded him of his own follies. He liked to believe he was perfect. It annoyed him no end when he remembered he had fathered a dull-witted bastard. Or—” She hesitated, then said, “That he had a strong attraction for a young girl he was afraid he
wasn’t perfect enough—handsome enough, young enough—to keep. Henry hated his own passion. It frightened him.”

For a moment, Graham just stared at her, holding the reins, one hand on the saddle’s pommel, his knee in the air. Then he slowly turned around again, putting his foot back on the ground. He steadied the horse, patting it.

“Why does it frighten you?” he asked.

“Why does what frighten me?”

“Passion.” The horse sidestepped nervously.

She laughed. “It doesn’t,” she said finally. “I’ve shared passion, I told you, with Henry.”

“With a man who was afraid of it?”

Submit blinked, frowned, then let out a breath. “You must get it through your head, Graham”—she used the name now like a prim, lecturing nanny—“that I loved my husband and that I—I made his bed mine quite happily. Don’t confuse that with the fact that I don’t want to play flirting, kissing games with you. I’m not available to any man who happens to trouble himself to ride out and ask.”

“Have other men asked?”

A burst of laughter escaped, disbelief. “Yes,” she said. With a show of scholarly patience, “Other men have asked.”

“And?”

“I’ve said no, just as I’m saying to you.”

“You have never even
kissed
another man?”

She narrowed her eyes. “This is really none of your business.”

“Then you have.”

“No, I have not.”

And this answer, quite surprisingly, seemed to provoke him more than if she had.

“Do you mean to tell me”—he leaned toward her with a kind of furious wonder—“you have never even kissed another man, no one but that nasty old curmudge—”

“Lord Netham.” She held her ground, facing him nose to
nose. “Irrespective of my dealing with that nasty old curmudgeon, the answer is no.”

He spoke directly into her face. “Lady Motmarche, I’m not a complete idiot: Irrespective of that nasty old curmudgeon, that smile a minute ago told me you wanted it kissed right off your face, wanted me to kiss you till your knees buckled and your drawers dropped around your ankles.” He turned and threw the reins again over the horse.

Anger let loose in Submit, rich and hot. It flooded her veins. “That’s a lie. A crudely put, self-deceiving lie.”

He looked over his shoulder as he put his foot in the stirrup again. “I can get cruder—”

“Yes, I’ve seen what you consider art—”

“And I can be a lot more honest: You are a self-righteous, arrogant prude who only knows how to fuck a man with her mind. No wonder you and Henry got on so well.”

He leaped onto his horse before she could speak. The horse wheeled around with surprising spirit. Dust churned. Bits of hay and dry grass flew. Submit backed up.

But she didn’t back down. “Lord Netham,” she called.

He brought the animal around, prancing in side steps. The horse whinnied and snorted at its short rein.

With perfect, quiet, malicious intent, Submit homed in on a little truth she was sure Graham Wessit would prefer not to see: “Would you be trying to seduce me if Henry were alive?”

He stared down, holding the animal in place. “Possibly,” Graham answered.

“What if he were standing here right now? Would you want to—what was that word you used? I’ve never heard it, but I take it it’s crude. Would you want to”—she marched bravely, cogently into this new word—“fuck me if Henry were standing here right now?”

Graham drew in a breath through his nostrils and scowled. “Definitely.”

“Which is my point. You don’t want to make love to me—as Henry did so very nicely, I might mention. You want to cuckold Henry Channing-Downes.” Submit thought she had tied all this up for him rather neatly.

But he laughed. “You’re bloody right, I would like to have cuckolded Henry. But Henry, my dear, is dead—”

“Not in your mind, he’s not.”

“No, it’s in your mind he’s alive. You’re still trying to be faithful to a nasty son of a bitch who’s six feet under the ground. And you can be for all I care—” The horse suddenly reared. Without a moment’s hesitation, Graham leaned up on its neck, bringing it crashing to the ground. He spun the animal around, putting it right where he wanted it again, facing her. “The two of you are perfect for each other,” he said. “A childish necromantic married to dead man who used children. Congratulations, you have found what I’ve been looking for all my adult life: a perfect match.”

Correspondence plagued the month of August, it seemed. Submit received a letter from Tate, detailing in writing some of the difficulties he was encountering with William’s lawsuit. The worst seemed to be that the other side had found a case of precedence. A bastard son a dozen years ago had been given the status of a younger son during his father’s lifetime. Then the older son died with the father in a train accident.
Voilà
. There was at least one country baron in Kent who came of illegitimate birth. Of course, this was a very long way from refuting a perfectly good will that laid things out in a very different manner.

Submit also received a letter from William decrying much the same point, but in broader, more threatening terms. Then there were the letters from Graham Wessit, at first consoling and flattering, then irritatingly persistent.

His first letter had eased something. The thought of Graham thinking of her with nothing but contempt had left Submit feeling surprisingly discontented. Despite their rough parting, he remained in her mind. Over the course of the last weeks he had become an astute companion with whom she talked about a number of things, if not always calmly, at least meaningfully. His letter of apology brought a kind of relief, a reprieve. She could envision his liking her still, even admiring her. How strange that she should want this, she thought; but she admitted to herself she did. Just as she admitted to herself that it was only courting disaster to allow him to think they could be friends. They disagreed on too much. He was a paradox. Genuinely a gentleman one moment, then shockingly crude the next. She couldn’t sort him out. Better she didn’t try, she thought; better they cease their struggle for a friendship that was in fact impossible.

The most interesting correspondence came at the end of
the first week in September. It was from a stranger, a man she had never heard of, let alone met.

Submit turned the brown business envelope over several times, puzzling over it. It had arrived with a large grey box. When she opened the envelope, a letter unfolded, and a slip of paper dropped out. It was a bank draft for twenty-eight pounds, in her name. She let out a little gasp of pure delight. It was enough money to pay her room and board at the inn for a dozen weeks. She bent her attention to the letter with avid interest.

The box was full of notes in several shades of ink, on all different sizes and scraps of paper, some faded with age, some new. Some of it looked like the remnants of a diary. The contents of the box were a wild confusion, much more disorganized than Henry usually was. As she laid out all the slips of paper, in their very familiar hand, she felt a tremor run through her. There was almost a kind of fervor to the quantity, the bulk and disorder, the scribbles that ran to the end of a page then up the margin and around. When had Henry done all this? And under what sort of mad inspiration?

Tucked at the side of the box, in a tied, neat bundle, were a stack of magazines. Again the name, Pease’s
Porridge
. A note, in the same handwriting as the letter, was attached to these: “You will find the first dozen episodes your husband did, here entitled
The Rake of Ronmoor
.”

It took all the rest of that day to glance through the printed episodes. The source of Henry’s inspiration became obvious: joy. The story—it was a little fiction!—was wonderful. It was fun, exciting, silly in a way Submit had never dreamed Henry’s imagination could run.

No one would have thought it possible!
one recent number read.
In public, Ronmoor danced the young girl out, in full view of her mother and a hundred other guests. The girl seemed in a dream, under a spell, as she most surely was. Ron
moor that night was the devil himself. He swirled her round the room, past dukes and viscounts and admirals, never letting a more appropriate partner claim even a dance.

By the end of the evening, people’s whispers had grown bold. The girl herself looked as though she might faint. Yet never did she take her eyes off the face of the notorious young scoundrel. Her expression was blissful, the look of a kind angel who saw a sinner to save.

Then, in the middle of the dance floor, the sinner had the audacity to press his vile lips onto the angel’s as-yet-unkissed mouth! The music stopped. The girl’s mother stood up from her chair. Surely, this will tell the tale, the reader must think! The young innocent will awaken with that kiss, as the dazed Sleeping Beauty, and see she is dealing with no prince!

But nay! Right does not always win! The mother threw the knave out. And the daughter rushed upstairs in tears. Of embarrassment, people whispered that night. But of passion, it was said later. For the little angel had developed a deadly appetite for the likes of the Rake of Ronmoor.

That evening, when she met him in the garden, she said nothing again, when his audacity led him to lift the delicate eyelet of her cambric petticoat and touch his hand up the smoothness of one pink silk stocking….

“Henry! My word!” Submit said aloud. But she kept reading. This was very cheeky stuff.

…up the smoothness of one pink silk stocking to the garter that came from Brussels, with its copious layers of fine, feminine, sweet Belgium lace.

Three discreet asterisks were left. Then a single sentence:

The cad wore her garter on his sleeve as he rode home!

Submit felt herself grow warm. Lo and behold! Henry’s magazine fiction was not only playful and inventive, it was vaguely naughty as well! Though he had some of it a bit wrong, she thought. What was all this Belgium lace and silk stocking business? Followed by a little sermon after that?
Submit frowned. When a woman’s virtue was in the balance, she supposed, an author had to make the moral point. Dickens did. So did Thackeray and Lever. So did they all. But Submit knew how the young woman
felt.
That was what she could add, if she were to write these….

She was contemplating doing what this Mr. Pease asked. And, partly, it was Graham Wessit goading her on. She
had
passion. And she was
not
wedded to Henry’s memory. She could riffle through Henry’s notes and strike out from them on her own. Submit even considered, looking at all the notes and the published pages, that she might have been mistaken about Henry himself. He had certainly left behind a body of prose which was fearlessly passionate in its way. The more she looked and spread things out, the more Submit could feel a new kind of excitement welling up. There was something here—things that drew her in, things she would do differently, things she had never dreamed of doing in her life—to which Henry, in the largest way, had given his secret imprimatur. The idea of exploring what was here began to fill her with heart-pounding, trembling delight.

It took another hectic day and a half to get the gist of the notes. The notes themselves were less wonderful, stopping and starting through a jumble of half-written scenes and phrases of description. Some of it couldn’t even be followed, the writing was so offhand and quick. Henry’s notes heralded a lot of work, if she were to stick to Henry’s plan. They were also a bit overdone. Henry seemed to be hammering a point home. Submit picked up a pen.

The very first scene was incredible fun. It was play! Great play! She discovered she loved moving the wonderful blackguard around. Clever, clever Henry! She could make fictional creatures do all the things she might like but never have the courage—or stupidity—to try. She could lambaste the rake for his cheek, reward him, rebuke him, lay him out
flat, then draw him up, back to life again, like a puppet on a string. Only it was much more fun than a puppet: The only limiting aspect was the thread of her own imagination.

By the end of the week, she had sent the first episode off—and received a prompt payment with a sincere, effusive letter of thanks in the mail. Henry’s trust account for her, she called it, as she tucked the second draft into her pocket. Hang William. Hang them all. Her future was secure. She could even begin to pay a little to Arnold Tate.

Submit wrote her way into the next week, staying up much too late, sometimes forgetting to eat. But she had found something to do, something that set her on some course at last, and it felt positively grand. She even found herself using some of her observations of one of the more interesting men she knew, Graham Wessit. She disguised these details, of course; she wouldn’t want to offend. Then again, he probably would never read such a thing. Still, Graham Wessit did somehow remind her a little of the fictional rake….