Private Arrangements (23 page)

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If only she could make time stay still. If only she need never depart the warmth of his embrace and the euphoria of their lovemaking. If only her world consisted of just this one dark room drenched in the sweet muskiness of sex, protected from tomorrow and the day after tomorrow by impregnable walls of forever-night.

Were she to have a guinea for every if-only of her life, she could pave a highway of gold from Liverpool to Newfoundland.

His breath still quick and erratic, her husband pulled away from her to lie on his back, not quite touching her. She bit her lower lip, the cold, clammy tentacles of reality already creeping up her limbs toward her heart.

He would not say anything unkind. But his silence was enough to remind her of everything she'd vowed never to do when he first returned. And all her declarations of love for Freddie, were they no more than words, and empty words at that?

“I called on you at your hotel in Copenhagen,” he said.

It took her an entire minute to decipher what he'd said. And even then she didn't understand. “You . . . you didn't leave a card?”

“You'd already left, for the
Margrethe.”

A blaze of elation swallowed her, only to be replaced by a bleak disbelief, an impotent amazement at Fate's capriciousness. “I didn't catch the
Margrethe,”
she said, dazed. “It'd already sailed when I arrived at the harbor.”

“What?”

She'd never heard him say “What?” before. He was too perfect for that; he'd never failed to use the more correct and more polite “Pardon?” Up until this moment.

“Where did you go, then?”

“Back to the same hotel. I left only the next day.”

He laughed, with bitter incredulity. “Did the hotel clerk not tell you that a fool came for you, with flowers?”

It was like finding out she was with child, then bleeding all over the place three weeks later. Only it was happening all in one searing moment. “The day clerk must have been gone by the time I decided I needed a place to stay for the night.”

He'd come for her. For whatever reason, he'd come for her. And they'd missed each other, as if Shakespeare himself had scripted their story on a day of particular misanthropy.

“What flowers did you bring?” she asked, because she couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Some . . .” His voice faltered, something else she'd never heard from him. “Some blue hydrangeas. They were already wilted.”

Blue hydrangeas. Her favorite. Suddenly she felt like crying.

“I wouldn't have minded.” She kept talking, to keep the tears at bay. “I was so upset I went to Felix as soon as I came ashore in England, only to find out he'd gotten married during the time I was away. I made a fool and a nuisance of myself anyway.”

He made a sound halfway between a snort and a grunt. “I almost hate to ask.”

“You've nothing to worry about. He didn't succumb to my advances. I came to my senses. End of story.”

“I came to my senses too, after a while,” he said slowly. “I convinced myself that what was done between us could not be undone, could never be undone.”

“And there is no such thing as a fresh start. Not really,” she concurred, her tears welling, the room a dark blur.

For the first time in her life, she saw exactly what she'd thrown away when she decided to have him by means fair or foul. For the very first time she truly understood, deep in her bones, that she'd not saved him but wronged him by consigning to him all the ability of a box turtle to make his own choices. She had been— just as she hadn't wanted to admit—impetuous, shortsighted, and selfish.

“I should not have done what I did. I'm sorry.”

“I wasn't exactly a paragon of rectitude myself, was I? I should have had the frankness to confront you, however unhappy that encounter would have been. Instead, I retreated to subterfuge and confused vengeance with justice.”

She laughed bitterly. For two intelligent people, they'd certainly made all the wrong choices that could have been made. And then some.

“I wish—” She stopped herself. What was the point? They'd missed their chance already.

“I wish the same. That I'd caught you that day, some-how.” He sighed, a heavy sound of regret. He turned toward her and turned her toward him, his hand clasped firmly on her upper arm. “But it's still not too late.”

For a long moment she didn't understand him. Then a thunderbolt crashed atop her, leaving her blind and staggered. There'd been a time in her life when she'd have walked barefoot over a mile of broken glass for a reconciliation with him. When she'd have expired from joy upon hearing those exact same words.

That time was years and years ago, long past. Her imbecilic heart, however, still leapt and burst and rolled around in clumsy cartwheels of jubilation.

Right into a wall.

She was promised to Freddie. Freddie, who trusted her unconditionally. Who adored her far more than she deserved. She'd reaffirmed her desire and determination to marry him every time she'd met him, the last time only two days before.

How could she possibly slap Freddie with such a gross betrayal?

“I tried not to,” said Camden, his eyes the most brilliant pinpoints of light in the night. “But all too often I wondered what might have happened, back in eighty-eight, had I not given up. Had I the nerve to come look for you in England.”

Why didn't you?
she cried silently.
Why didn't you come for me when I was lonely and heartsick? Why did you wait until I'd committed myself to another man?

She covered her eyes, but her head was still babel and bedlam, feral thoughts cannibalizing each other, emotions in a pandemonium of roundhouse and fisticuff. Then suddenly a siren song arose above the din, sweet and irresistible, and she could hear nothing else.

A new beginning. A new beginning. A new beginning. A new spring after the dead of winter. A phoenix arising from its own ashes. The magical second chance that had always eluded her futile quests now presented to her on a platter of gold, on a bed of rose petals.

She had but to reach out and—

It was this very same insatiable craving for him that had overcome her a decade ago, this very same impulse to damn everything and everyone else. She'd surrendered her principles and acted out of expediency and untrammeled self-interest. And look what had happened. At the end of the day, she'd had neither self-respect nor happiness.

But the siren song descanted more beautifully still. Remember how you giggled and prated together about everything and nothing? Remember the plans you made, to hike the Alps and sail the Riviera? Remember the hammock you were going to crowd in warmer weathers, the two of you, side by side, with Croesus stretched atop the both of you?

No, those were mirages, memories and wishes distorted through rose-tinged lenses. Her future lay with Freddie—Freddie, who did not deserve to be ignominiously cast aside. Who deserved the best she had to give, not the worst. He had entrusted his entire happiness to her. She could not live with herself were she to trifle with that trust.

What about—

No. If she must endure the siren song, like Odysseus, thrashing and flailing in temptation, then she would. But she would not abandon Freddie. Nor her own decency. Not this time. Not ever again.

She looked at Camden. “I can't,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I'm pledged to another.”

His fingers on her arm tightened infinitesimally. Then the coolness of the night replaced the warmth of his hand. His eyes did not leave hers, but she could no longer see the light in them. Only an infinite darkness met her gaze. “Why did you tell me about the Dutch cap exactly?”

Why exactly? “I was”—if there was a riding crop nearby, she'd gladly have used it on herself—“I thought you'd be so disgusted you wouldn't want anything more to do with me.”

“I see, preserving your loyalty to Lord Frederick still.”

His voice had gone chill. As had her heart. A frozen expanse except for one white flame of anguish.

“Why, then, did you not object when I exposed you to a very real risk of consequences?”

And what could she say? That she'd ever been so? That he had but to display the slightest sweetness and approval for her to forget everything otherwise important? That she was a hopeless imbecile in his bed?

“I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry.”

The bed creaked. For a fleeting second she saw the deep channel of his back as he sat with his hands braced to either side of him, his head bent. Then he left the bed altogether.

“I wish you'd have remembered all those scruples a little sooner,” he said, a current of anger churning beneath his seamless politeness. He shrugged into his dressing gown and tightened the sash in a savage motion.

She sat up, clutching the bedspread against her chest.
Stay,
she wanted to say.
Stay with me. Do not leave.
Instead, she mumbled in arrant daftness, “You said yourself that what happened between us cannot be undone, can never be undone.”

“And would that I had heeded my own sage advice,” he said curtly, marching toward the door.

“Wait!” she cried. “Where are you going? The rooms upstairs aren't safe. You don't know what other damages could have been done.”

“I'll take my chances,” he said. “There's bound to be a bed in this house that's less dangerous than yours.”

Camden lay abed in the chamber that had been first assigned to him. He stared at the ceiling and half-wished it would collapse on him and knock him senseless.

Not that he had a full implement of sense left.
I wasn't thinking,
she'd said. She most certainly wasn't alone in it. He probably hadn't had a properly lucid day since the first letter from her solicitors arrived the previous September, requesting an annulment.

He'd long referred to his marriage as “that tolerable state of being.” Tolerable because as long as the legalities were ironclad and ineluctable, she was still wedded to him, with a chance that one day, in a faraway, golden-misted future, they might yet rise above their youthful
Sturm and Drang
and achieve some sort of passable happiness. Not that he willingly admitted any such wishful thinking to himself, but fourteen-hour working days translated into nights too weary for self-censorship.

When she moved to officially dissolve their marriage, with flocks of letters from her lawyers darkening the sky like so many swarms of Egyptian locusts, the stasis on which he depended descended into chaotic disequilibrium. He found himself a stunned observer, unable to do anything other than toss the letters into the fireplace with increasing grimness and alarm.

Annulment was one thing. Divorce, however, quite another. When she'd actually gone ahead and petitioned for divorce, he'd been jolted with wrath, a massacre-the-peasants-and-salt-the-earth blood rage. This marriage was their devil's pact, begun in lies and sealed in spite. How dare she try to break free of this chain of acrimony that bound them? Neither of them deserved any better.

How injudicious he'd been to not understand the eruption of years of pent-up frustration. And how blind, when he'd calmed down during the Atlantic crossing, to think that he'd arrived at a reasonable, mature solution in his demand for an heir as a condition for releasing her from their marriage.

All he'd achieved was the unleashing of the beastly attraction that had taken him years to tame. But whereas once the beast had devoured her, this time it consumed
him.

He didn't know whether it was courage or madness that made him ask her outright to not throw away everything they'd ever had. He only knew the black pain of her rejection, a sense of loss through which he could barely breathe.

Somehow he couldn't believe that this was it, that their story would end with such wretchedness, as if Hansel and Gretel had become the witch's dinner after all, or Sleeping Beauty's prince a pile of gnawed bones in the Enchanted Forest. But her voice, though barely audible, had been firm and clear. She might cling and writhe beneath him—and lose her head momentarily—but she kept her larger goal firmly in sight. And that goal was to sever all ties with him.

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was still stuck in 1883. Perhaps this was indeed how their story would end, she as another man's radiant bride, and he but a dusty footnote in the annals of her history.

She was in the dining room, staring at an already cold cup of tea, when he appeared at her side, in riding gear, his hair windblown.

“I imagine we should know, in a few weeks, whether there will be consequences from our action last night,” he said without preamble.

“I imagine so.” She looked back to her tea, all too aware of his presence, of the scent of morning mist still clinging to him, and already panicking over what news the end of her cycle might bring. Either way. “If there aren't any consequences, would you let me go to Freddie?”

“And if there are, would you still insist on marrying him?”

“If there are”—she pushed the words out past the lump in her throat—“I would hold up my end of the bargain, and I should like you to honor your part of it.”

In response, he chortled softly, a sound without warmth or emotions. He took her chin in hand and slowly tilted her face so that she was forced to look at him. “I hope Lord Frederick does not live to regret his choice,” he said. “Your love is a terrible thing.”