Grahame, Lucia (49 page)

But I was an impostor as well.

"Forgive me, madame," I said. "Sir Anthony Camwell
is my husband."

I waited for the explosion—a very controlled explosion, for
Madame's shot always went deep, but never wide.

"Risen from the grave, with a new name
and
a
title," said she. "What an astonishing metamorphosis!"

She gave us a moment to savor her witticism.

"But it does not come entirely as a surprise to me," she
went on. "I suppose you both ought to know that Monsieur Valory and I have
very few secrets from each other.
We
both have too much respect for the
truth."

I flushed under the implied rebuke. My husband had dropped his
gaze; his cheeks too had darkened with what I could only suppose was chagrin. I
ached for him; to think that he should find himself in this wretched situation
because of me.

He brought his gaze back to my employer.

"I apologize, madame, for the deception," he said
quietly.

"I too," I whispered, but my words were meant for him.

"Apologies accepted," said Madame brusquely. "I
cannot pretend that I did not know what I was getting into, although I never
dreamed"—here she stopped and subjected my husband to a long, appraising
look—"that you would actually storm the gates." -

"I came more as a Trojan horse, I fear," said my
husband.

"So you did," said Madame with a little smile. "And
you,"
she went on, turning to me. "To my pupils and to the other
teachers here, you are still Mrs. Hastings, whose husband is deceased. I cannot
permit anything which might call the decorum of our otherwise irreproachable
English mistress into question. If you wish to have a
brief
private
conversation, I will allow you to have it here, but that door
must
remain
open. Certainly
I
have no intention of eavesdropping, but I shall be
outside to make sure that no one else yields to the temptation. If you keep
your voices low, I think you will have as much privacy as you require. However,
there are still a few young ladies here, so if you two have some quarrel, be
good enough to take it elsewhere. And if you have any peacemaking to do,"
she concluded, "you may arrange the preliminaries here. But do not go far
in your negotiations until you are
well
away from these premises."

She stood up. My courteous husband sprang to his feet as well.

"Thank you, madame," he said.

"Have
we a quarrel, Mrs. Hastings?" he
asked softly as soon as she had left us.

I couldn't speak. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

"Then why did you make it so difficult for me to find you? I
scoured Paris for weeks. Marguerite and Théo were no help at all. If I hadn't
come across your friend Hazelton I don't know what I would have done. I am
grateful that you
have
such a friend, for I was in so wretched a state
that he finally took pity on me and scouted La Sorrel's orders to keep your
whereabouts a secret. Thank God for his kindness!"

"But I
told
you where I was. Why have you never
answered my letter?"

"What letter?" he inquired with a blank, rather startled
look. "You sent me a letter? Where did you send it? When?"

"To Charingworth! Weeks ago!"

The look of bewilderment fled from my husband's face.

"Of course it never reached me! Do you suppose that
Charingworth is any kind of home to me now! Why do you think I told you to send
everything to Smalley & Brown! No doubt your message has been playing hare
and hounds with me all across Europe! Well, never mind that—what did it
say?"

Beyond the open door a tiny cluster of young ladies were making
noisy farewells.

I looked at the door and back at my husband in agony. If I
breathed even a word of what I had written, I was sure I would lose the last
shreds of my self-control.

"Please, Anthony," I appealed to him at last. "Not
here."

My husband, too, had glanced toward the doorway, but his
expression was one of pure irritation. Yet, within seconds his look reverted to
that earlier one of bemused wonderment.

"Well, I suppose I shall have to wait then," was all he
said. "I seem to have become better at that than I once thought."

"You don't have to wait—for anything," I told him,
praying that he would understand me.

But instead of giving any sign of comprehension, he got up and
walked away from me. He stationed himself at one of the long windows and stood
there silently looking out. I could see only his back and, beyond it, the fine
little snow-flakes making their eddying descent to earth. Some of them struck
the window, melted slowly, and slid down the glass like tears.

After a long time, he turned around and with a little smile, said,
"Well, I think I will at least have to wait until you are released from
your obligations here. When will that be, Mrs. Hastings?"

"Oh!" I replied, coming back to reality as I recalled
that I had committed myself to assisting Madame Vignon with a number of
last-minute tasks. "Not until this evening! This is my last day
here," I added.

"In that case, I suppose I ought to leave you to your
work," he remarked without much enthusiasm.

"Oh, not quite yet!" I protested. "We have a
little
time. And there is one thing I
must
know. Why have you come here, if
it was not because of my letter?"

"Did you really imagine I could accept your obstinate
insistence upon living in poverty! I came here to find out for myself
why
you
have so stubbornly and foolishly refused everything that was due you from
me!"

"You owe me nothing."

"I am your husband. Didn't I vow to endow you with all my
worldly goods?"

"Yes, but we have both made—and broken—a number of
vows," I pointed out.

"Ah. But
mine
were in earnest, even if I have strayed
from them occasionally."

At this, I bit my lip; it was still a sore point with me.

"But not lately," remarked my husband casually, as if he
had read my thoughts. "Not, in fact, since the first night you slept at
Grosvenor Square. If it matters to you."

He was watching me closely. My heart beat faster, but I could not
open my mouth to tell him how much it mattered.

"One reason I came to Geneva was to restore this to
you," he went on.

He picked up a small, plainly wrapped parcel from the table beside
the sofa and handed it to me. I took it dumbly.

"You really can't refuse it," he was saying. "If
you do, I shall be forced to keep it for you and to send you exorbitant bills
demanding compensation for the inconvenience of having to safeguard it. That
would be a pity. From the look of you, I do not think you can manage many
unnecessary expenses."

I peeled off the paper to reveal a jeweler's case. I raised the cover.
Inside lay the diamond collar.

"Really, Mr. Blake," I said, striving for a lightness
that would match his as I attempted to hand it back to him, "this is a
most inappropriate gift for a governess."

"It is not mine to give." He left the open box in my outstretched
hand. "It belongs to you, Mrs. Hastings. It ought to make your life
somewhat easier. Has it never occurred to you
why
I gave it to
you?"

"I've always assumed that it was part of your campaign to
turn me into a lady of fashion."

"A doomed campaign, I see, in spite of some temporary
victories," remarked my husband, casting a disapproving eye at my gray
dress. "But that was not why I gave you the diamonds."

"Why
did
you, then?"

"We had been married for six months, and you were desperately
unhappy. You would not, or could not, tell me why, nor could I discover where
all your money was going. Nevertheless, it was clear that you had some pressing
need which required every penny. There would have been nothing to prevent you,
you know, from having the necklace copied in paste and exchanging the real
thing for cash. I hoped it might present you with a discreet solution to your
difficulties."

I stared at him in disbelief. "You imagined that I would
stoop to that!" I exclaimed, before I realized what a ludicrous protest it
was.

But my husband did not laugh.

"Where's the dishonesty in that?" he asked.

"To accept such a precious gift and then palm off a copy on
you! That would be stealing!"

"I don't see why. Once I've given you something, do you
suppose that I still consider it mine? The necklace was yours to do with as you
wished. There would have been nothing underhanded about selling it." He
hesitated before adding, "And if the lack of money was all that prevented you
from bolting your marriage, it would have given you the means to do so."

Now I was truly shocked.

"You
wanted
me to leave you! And like
that!"
I
exclaimed in a very low voice.

"It was the last thing I wanted! But what could I do? You
were miserable, you would barely talk to me.... I was racked with memories of
how much happier you had seemed when I knew you in Paris. The diamonds, I
thought, might give you the means to return to that other life, which seemed to
suit you so much better than your life with me. Of course, I hoped you wouldn't
leave me! Of course I still struggled to delude myself that you loved me! But,
more than anything, I wanted you to choose me freely.... I had no way of
knowing, then, that you were caught in a snare from which not even these
diamonds could have sprung you."

"Well," I said when I had absorbed his words, "I
have
been sprung from the snare of poverty, at any rate." I told him
briefly of my legacy.

"Oh," he said. "So
that
is why Mr. Blake's
offer no longer interests you and why you wrote to turn him away! And
I
feared
that it was because you had pierced my alias!"

"Then you did receive
that
letter, at least!"

"Shh!" he exclaimed with an expression of alarm.
"Don't let Madame Vignon hear you! She has terrorized me quite enough
today. I would not like to let her discover that I am an even more incorrigible
liar than she already believes me to be. My untruthfulness, in fact, is my
second reason for having come to see you."

"Your
untruthfulness?"

"I told you once that I never lied to you. And then I lied to
you not once but twice. I told you I hated you. That was a lie, or at any rate,
it was not the whole truth. I want you to know that."

I found this tepid comfort.

"And the other lie?" I said.

"Yes, the other lie," he said somewhat haltingly. It
seemed a more difficult one to confess to. "Well, you may as well know
that when I came to your room that last time, it was not to ask you to leave.
And when I put my hands on your shoulders, it was not because I felt sorry for
you. I merely said that, after you pulled away, to cover my... Well, your
manner seemed so altered when you met me at the station that... But
then..."

He seemed to be having trouble completing his sentences.

"Oh, if only you knew what happened that day!" I burst
out. "Andromeda threw me, and I bruised my shoulder horribly. It nearly
killed me when you—"

"Good heavens, Fleur!" interrupted my husband. "You
know better than to be thrown! How the devil could you have let something like
that happen? Why, you might have—"

"I know," I said humbly. "It was inexcusable. I
wasn't paying attention. I might have broken her leg."

"—been seriously injured!" concluded my husband.

He sank down upon the sofa, shaking his head.

"Thank God nothing happened to you before—" he began in
a choked voice. Then he brought his eyes back to mine.

"I was wrong about everything, Fleur," he said more
calmly. "Since you have been gone, I have begun to realize how little I
troubled myself to understand you."

I began to wonder whether I was dreaming again. Perhaps this
conversation was as unreal as last night's train ride.

"That's not true!" I protested. "You went to
endless trouble, again and again, only to be rebuffed each time!"

But he pressed on. "I was so harsh, so inflexible. As you so
often pointed out, I have never known poverty. How could I imagine the kind of
desperation it can lead to? It was unreasonable and unjust of me to insist that
you ought to have trusted me enough to confide so delicate a matter as the
source of your difficulties. I never deserved your trust. I have a great deal
to answer for."

"Oh no! It was I who wronged you! I did not value you at your
worth."

"No," he persisted. "I think you
did
value
me at my worth, which has proven to be very small. I have always prided myself
not on
being
a gentleman—which is merely an accident of birth—but upon
behaving
as one, which is another thing altogether. And I was no gentleman to you,
Fleur."