Grahame, Lucia (11 page)

But how could I blame him? If he were looking down upon me now
from some other world, he must be sharing all my anguish. How could he have
dreamed that his final gamble would lead to this? It could never have crossed
his mind that he would not make it home that last night, that he would never be
able to ransom those scorching canvasses from Poncet before the year was out.

But there was only one avenue which might ever allow me to meet
Poncet's demands, at least for a time, and thinking of my dead husband would
not make it any easier for me to embark upon it.

I would have to take up, with quiet discretion, my grandmother's
profession. No doubt that was what Poncet had meant to imply when he'd told me
that I would need to learn the subtle ways that a woman can work her will upon
the stronger, the richer, the more powerful sex. But even this did not offer a
sure solution; in a business which puts a premium on youth, I was already too
old, at twenty-six, to achieve more than a modest success. I was sure I could
never rival the
grandes horizontales
of Paris. Could I even earn enough
to keep him from acting on his threats? And what would become of me as the
years advanced and my earning power declined?

The day would surely come when those paintings could no longer be
hidden.

I could see myself, rough and coarsened, living hand-to-mouth as
my grandmother had, being frigidly cut by the self-same respectable ladies and
gentlemen whose soiled linen I would wash and iron, whose dirty floors I would
scour on my hands and knees.

She had been right about everything, everything. She had looked
straight at the world as it was, not as one might wish it to be.

"Oh, Frederick," I whispered into my pillow that night.
"Where are you now? I need you!"

He had told me, before his departure in May, that he did not
expect to return to France again until July. Yet three days after my meeting
with Poncet, Sir Anthony made a sudden, flying visit to Paris and called upon
me the very morning after his arrival.

I had spent many sleepless hours since Poncet's revelation and was
already steeled to make the speech I knew I must. I intended to tell Sir
Anthony that I would see him no more. Perhaps he would attribute this to the
revealing incident at Fontainebleau, for I was at a loss to invent a better
explanation. But sooner or later, some part of the truth must become apparent
to him—the paintings themselves might remain a secret, but I could hardly hope
to conceal, equally well, the means I would have to take to keep them one. I
remembered how proudly Sir Anthony had introduced me to friends and
acquaintances on the day of Caylat's triumphant show. I felt ill as I thought
of the shame that would redound to him when Paris began to whisper that the
lady he had honored so greatly had set out along the primrose path.

"You are unwell, Madame Brooks!" exclaimed Sir Anthony
before I had a chance to do more than welcome him.

"Oh no, I am merely a little tired," I demurred.

"Then you have been working too hard! While I—" Here he
broke off. I sensed that he was profoundly agitated behind his polished veneer.

"Can I do anything for you? I really ought to let you rest
and come back another time," he then proposed with anxious solicitude.

"Oh no, not at all," I said, uncertain as to which of
his contradictory offers I was addressing. I could think of nothing further to
add. The moment had come to bring our brief but precious friendship to an end.

My mind was spinning. My prepared speech had slipped from my
memory, and I sought helplessly for a gentle way —yet one which would leave no
opening for questions or objections—to tell him that I would not see him again.

"Madame Brooks," he broke out rather breathlessly before
I could say more, "let me tell you what has brought me back to Paris. I
have been thinking of you constantly since I was last in France, and I find
myself unable to hide my feelings any longer, although I know it is premature
to express them. I have struggled to keep my distance until the passage of time
would make my declaration less unseemly. But I cannot continue to be silent. I
must
tell you that everything you have done since the day I first saw you, and
every word you have spoken, have convinced me that you are the only woman on
earth whom I could ever love."

I lifted my eyes to stare at him with blank astonishment. I might
have read his heart at Fontainebleau, but he had always been so reserved! And
it seemed inconceivable he could have chosen
this
wretched moment to
make his passionate avowal. I barely comprehended the full significance of his
words.

"I never dreamed," he continued, "that I could love
anyone as I have come to love you. Madame Brooks... Fleur... you have already
won my heart. Will you take my hand as well?"

Really, I must have been particularly dim that day: It was a full
minute or two before I grasped that he was asking me to marry him.

"But you hardly know me," I stammered at last, still
thinking of the paintings but not yet perceiving that he had offered me a way
out of my impossible dilemma. It was incredible that he should wish to take
me—me, Fleur Deslignères, the granddaughter of Holwich, Kent's most notorious
and least upstanding citizen—back to England, to be introduced to his well-bred
friends and to be installed in the very heart of his family circle.

"I know the woman you are," he was saying. "And I
know that nothing on earth could ever alter my regard... my love... for
you."

The irony of this was almost more than I could bear. He knew
nothing of the woman I was, nothing. He knew only the woman I had been with
him.

"Will you have me?" he whispered.

He wanted to marry me! Who would have dreamed that his nobly
restrained passion could at last have driven him to propose such a mesalliance!

But he was rich and generous, and if I were very careful with what
he gave me, perhaps I could keep Poncet permanently at bay. Sir Anthony himself
need never know.

My whole soul cried out against what I was about to do, but I am
afraid that those cries were not quite as strong as the horror I had struggled
to repress at my every thought of the only other route out of my difficulties.
After all, to give myself legitimately to a man I liked so deeply and sincerely
was a far less hideous prospect than that of selling myself to a series of men
I neither liked nor loved.

I struggled with my conscience, I fought to maintain some
semblance of calm, and finally I managed to answer, "Yes, Anthony, I
will."

I can't say that he looked as elated as one might have expected.
He seemed to be waiting hopefully for something more. I knew what was wanted,
but I could not quite manage it. So instead I did what I imagined was the next
best thing and said, "It will be an honor—and a joy—to be your wife."

He dropped to his knees by the arm of the sofa, took my clenched
hands in his own, and very gently began to loosen my fingers.

"Are you quite sure?" he whispered. "Perhaps it is
too soon for you to give your heart to anyone. Tell me, Fleur, do you love me
at all?"

My recurrent vision of the only alternative that remained to me,
should I deny him what he hungered for, was so alarming that it filled my voice
with real feeling as, wild with relief and despair, I cried out, "Oh, yes,
yes, yes! I do!"

I remember only fragments of the rest of that feverish
conversation. He took me in his arms once or twice, but now that the moment had
come, when I was at last free to yield to the warm pressure of his body against
mine, when I might have given him my lips boldly with no need for self-recrimination
on either his part or mine, my blood did not surge with fire. I felt utterly
numb and exhausted; he must have noticed this, for every so often he anxiously
renewed his inquiries as to my health.

I kept assuring him that I was well, that my pallor was simply the
result of having slept badly the night before.

"Then you must sleep now!" he declared. "Let me
warm a cup of milk for you. It may help to relax your nerves," he
continued, and added with a regretful smile, "which I fear I have only
jangled further."

"Oh no!" I said, trying to smile as well. "I am
rather tired, it is true, but f have a pupil coming within the hour. I can't
risk being half sedated when she arrives."

"But you must send her away," he decreed. "You have
obviously been pushing yourself beyond the limits of your endurance."

I took a deep breath and swallowed my annoyance. I was still my
own woman, although I would not be for long.

"No," I said firmly. "I will
not
drink hot
milk. I will
not
send my pupil away. And I will not marry you if you
persist in ordering me about like this!"

Instead of looking chastened, he laughed.

"How right you are," he said tenderly. "Forgive me,
Fleur. I swear to you that I will
never
give you any reason to regret
the new life you have chosen with me."

No regrets! What a vain promise!

Regrets had become the treacherous prevailing undercurrent of my
life; every time I imagined that I had risen free of them at last, they dragged
me down again.

I was drowning in regret.

My whole life was about to become one huge and irreparable lie.

Sir Anthony remained in Paris only long enough to put into motion
the machinery of matrimony—we were to be married in August here at St. George's
English Church. Before he returned to England, he expressed some concern about
how I would adapt to my new surroundings. Did I wish to visit Charingworth, his
ancestral home, and arrange alterations to its decor that might suit my taste better
than its present furnishings?

I did not. I waved a hand toward my threadbare carpet and faded
curtains and asked him, with a laugh, if he really imagined I might find his
splendid country house wanting in any way.

Privately I knew that my new surroundings, however ornate, could
never begin to console me for the loss of my freedom or for marriage to a man
for whom I must never permit myself to care too deeply.

For I already knew that if I allowed myself to feel too much for
him, if I were to trust him too completely, I might be tempted to pour my heart
out. And if I were ever foolish enough to confess the truth, I was sure to lose
everything.

He held me in his arms and gave me a tender kiss before he left
me. With any encouragement, his kiss might have been less restrained, but
although I felt almost comforted by the warmth of his arms, the physical desire
which had ravished me in Fontainebleau did not flare up again.

Everything inside me seemed frozen. Perhaps the chill had taken
hold when Poncet had presented me at last with the invoice for all the passion
which had been unleashed within my first marriage. Perhaps it had come over me
the first time I'd found myself obliged to lie to Sir Anthony, telling him I
loved him when I could barely comprehend the true nature of my feelings. A week
ago I had been anxious to see him again; I'd been restless with thoughts of
those forbidden embraces I knew he yearned for yet denied himself, and when I'd
dreamed of being close to him once again, of knowing that the lightest touch of
his hand would carry the weight of a wild, inadmissible passion, I felt as if
my skin had been touched by a hot wind.

But no more.

Now I could hardly wait for him to depart for England and relieve
me, at least for a time, of the obligation to invent cheerful answers to his
affectionate questions.

Once he was gone, I could at last begin to think more coolheadedly
about all that this marriage would require of me and could try to devise some
way of rising to the challenge.

But when I was finally free to devote my attention to these
pressing matters, I found that the mere prospect of becoming Lady Camwell
filled me with stark terror.

I recalled a joking remark Lord Marsden had once made to the
effect that his cousin sometimes seemed to hold himself to an almost inhumanly
high standard of conduct. Lord Marsden had punctuated this observation with an
indulgent laugh, but now the memory alarmed me. No doubt it was true; and no
doubt Sir Anthony would hold his bride to the same relentless standards. He
might be kindly and diffident in France, where he came for pleasure, but who
knew how he might behave in his own domain? Would that inflexible morality I
had sensed in him from time to time be the law by which he ruled his household?

Oh, there were a thousand reasons why this marriage could never
work! But somehow I would have to keep it limping along for as long as I could.

If Sir Anthony had proposed to me a week earlier than he actually
had, how would I have responded? I would have had to ask him to give me time to
think—it was all so unexpected. Then I would have had to examine myself as to
whether I honestly loved him or believed that I might be coming to love him. I
would have had to explore every obstacle to closeness of which I was now
becoming painfully aware. I would have been obliged to confront him with all
the things in my past that were sure to scandalize his friends, his family, and
very likely my high-minded suitor himself.