Grahame, Lucia (12 page)

Now I no longer had any of these luxuries—of time, of fearless
soul-searching, or of candor.

I would have to marry him whether I loved him or not. I would have
to conceal from him anything and everything that might suggest how unwisely he
had chosen his wife.

I would have to mimic love without ever allowing myself to feel
it. I would have to suppress any impulse to speak too freely: I might expose my
loneliness, an incessant nostalgia for my old life, or my continual longing for
Frederick; I might make some thoughtless and revealing allusion to my
grandmother, or voice an opinion that someone in my privileged position could
scarcely be expected to hold. One careless word might shatter the illusion of
love, not to mention the identity I had acquired not only by marriage to
Frederick but by my own efforts as well—that of the mysterious, refined,
reserved, and elegant Madame Brooks, who had won Anthony Camwell's heart
without even trying.

Oh, there would be countless areas where a misstep could cost me
dearly.

I would have to adapt myself quickly to a very unforgiving harness
or risk exposing myself to constant criticism and scandal-mongering, for surely
the freedoms that generous-spirited Paris had allowed Madame Brooks would never
be tolerated in the upper echelons of English society.

If only there were someone I could talk to!

I thought, with a sharp pang of loss and longing, of my dear
friend, Guy Hazelton. I had not seen him for years, not since he'd given up his
life in Paris to return to England with his beloved Harry.

Of course, like me, he was the sort of person who would be shunned
by English society if he were ever to stand in the light of truth. In Paris,
his inclinations were not looked upon with nearly the same horror that is felt
for such things in England. In Paris, his passion for Harry had not been
entirely clandestine; within the small, tightly knit circle of our closest
friends, it had been as casually accepted as his friendship with me.

How I missed him!

To him alone I might even have been able to confide every
agonizing nuance of the tangle in which I now found myself ensnared.

What a relief it would have been to pour all my troubles into his
discreet and sympathetic ear. I had always been able to tell Guy things I could
barely discuss with anyone else—not with Marguerite, not even with Frederick.
Frederick, although he had known virtually every salient fact about my life,
had never cared to know how I
felt
about anything that made me less than
joyful.

He had been the same with Guy. Although Guy and I had become the
closest of confidantes, Frederick had held back; he'd made it his business to
avoid knowing anything about the anguish Guy had suffered for months before
he'd found the courage to reveal the dangerous secret in his heart, only to
find that his love for Harry was returned.

To Guy alone had I ever admitted that I still bore the scars of
having been a virtual outcast in the village where I had been raised, and that
it was this that had made me so determined to present one face to Paris even as
I showed another one altogether to my husband. To Frederick, I was his
fleur
du mal.
To Paris, I was only his devoted and angelic wife.

I'd had few secrets from Guy. But Guy had faded out of my life,
through no fault of his own. I had not seen him since the night of my
miscarriage, when we'd dined at the Coq d'Or.

Afterward Guy had written to me several times from London, but I
had never been able to answer his cheerful letters. How easily I might have
talked to him about the devastation of losing my child. But the painful task of
trying to put it on paper proved far beyond my power. Eventually his own
letters had stopped. When at last I broke my silence to write to him of
Frederick's death, it turned out that he had moved long ago from the West End
flat which was the only address I had for him.

It was entirely possible, however, that I would run into him again
in England. I hoped I would. At least it was
one
thing I could still
anticipate with real pleasure.

But suppose that some day the scandalous secret about his own
private life came to light?

I knew that
I
would never turn my back on him; never could
I close my door against a beloved friend.

But the doors behind which I must live in England would not be mine
to open or to close. Certainly I could never assume that my future husband
would unlock his gates to every pariah I might choose to claim as a friend.

And I knew that if he proved to be as rigid and intolerant as I
feared he might, I would turn away from him with a heart of stone. What
were
those "responsibilities" of his, after all, if not some feeling
of obligation to uphold the standards and morals of the narrow and ungenerous
society which had spawned him?

As I considered all the difficulties, real and imaginary, that lay
in wait for me, my sense of hopelessness became almost unendurable. I began to
feel as if I were under a lifetime sentence of transportation and bondage.

I loved Paris and hated England. I didn't want to live there, and
certainly not in the antiquated luxury of some baronial manor, where my every
breath would be drawn under the frigid eyes of a huge staff of disapproving
servants whose lineage would almost certainly compare favorably with my own and
who would probably discern this pretty quickly.

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.

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.

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.