Rose Trelawney (17 page)

Mulliner and his housekeeper arrived a little late. Miss Wickey sought me out, and I told her I was sorry I had not got in to see her lately.

I thought it was only the unaccustomed treat of the ball that had her looking more animated than usual, but she soon disillusioned me. “Surprise!” she said, handing a small packet to me. My next thought was that she was giving me a gift, but she explained quickly. “I found it under the dustskirt of your bed. At the rectory, I mean. I think it must have fallen out of a pocket when I shook out your clothing that night you arrived. You remember, Miss Smith, your cape was wet, and I gave it a shake before putting it away?”

I opened the package to be confronted with a ring. A plain golden band it was. A wedding ring. “It’s not mine!” I said, handing it back to her.

“Oh but it must be, my dear. I never saw it before, and you were the only one to have used that room in months. It must be yours.”

“No I never saw it before. It’s not mine,” I insisted, shoving it back.

“You wouldn’t remember, would you?” she asked reasonably. “Try it on. See if it fits.”

It fit perfectly, slid on just with a little push over the knuckle, as a ring should. “There! I knew it must be yours,” she said, smiling happily.

You may imagine how I felt. I looked at it as though it were an evil charm. It was clearly a wedding ring. It was half an inch wide, and felt more like a manacle than a ring. “Thank you,” I said, my voice sounding hollow.

“You’re welcome, I’m sure. I always had the notion you were a married woman. You had so much self-confidence, managed Mr. Mulliner so well,” she added mischievously. “I never had the nerve to go at him as you did. He still complains about you, calls you an arch wife.”

My gown had no pocket, and I carried no evening bag with me, so that the thing remained on my finger, quite effectively ruining my night. The party, so long looked forward to, went on around me, but my thoughts were all taken up with this ring, and the new idea it must present me with. I was a married woman. Somewhere in this country or another I had a husband, possibly even children. How was it possible I could forget them? How was it possible I could wish they did not exist? The only silver lining to this dark cloud, and it was a tarnished lining at best, was that I was rid of any lingering doubt as to being a lady of pleasure. I had learned and practiced my manipulative techniques within the respectability of marriage, making me a lady of principles.

But was the ring necessarily mine? I had always thought the cloak, gown and shoes to be borrowed. The ring must have been in the pocket of the cloak when I put it on. It had been removed (for what possible reason?) by the true owner. Yet it fit me perfectly. Felt at home to a peg on my finger.

Sir Ludwig had the second dance with his sister. I think he did not wish to incite the relatives and neighbors to too much conjecture by distinguishing me in any way. It was not till a waltz was struck up that he came to me.

“Is it permissible for Miss Trelawney to waltz, or has she not made her come-out yet?” he asked.

“You must know married ladies are always allowed to waltz,” I answered, glancing to the ring, which he had not noticed as yet.

“What, bagged a husband already, have you? I thought it was no more than a
carte blanche
young Heltern was offering you. Has he been annoying you, by the way?”

“Vastly but no more than everyone else.”

“It’s been pretty bad, hasn’t it?” he asked with a rueful smile.

“It has been horrid, and I begin to feel I have been attacked unjustly, for it turns out I have been married all the time, and you were never in the least danger from me.”

“Is that right?” he asked, looking only amused. “Very poor timing, Rose, to remember Ivor when I am as well as compromised by having you here a month. Nothing but a wedding will restore me to respectability.”

“You had better offer for Miss Veeley, then,” I informed him in an acidic voice. He looked a question.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I held up my left hand. “It’s mine. Miss Wickey found it in my room. It fell out of my pocket, she thinks.”

He blinked twice, without saying a word. Suddenly my wrist was grabbed in a painful hold, and I was being pulled from the ballroom. He didn’t stop till we got to his office, where he summarily yanked the ring off, nearly taking the finger with it. “This isn’t yours. It’s much too tight,” he said angrily.

“It fits perfectly,” I contradicted. Strangely enough, the stubborn thing went back on more easily than it came off.

He reached out to remove it again, but I closed my fingers over it, repeating in a little more detail the story of its turning up after all this time. “It’s not yours,” he repeated firmly. He went on to outline that the cloak was definitely not mine, though it did, in fact, fit perfectly. As had the gown. It was only the shoes that were loose. “It belongs to whoever you borrowed the cloak from. That’s all,” he finished up.

“It fits
me,”
I insisted.

“Give it to me.” He reached his hand out impatiently. I slid it off and handed it to him. He took it over to the lamp and looked on the inside for an inscription. There was nothing but a ‘T’ inside, enclosed within a diamond —the jeweler’s mark. This ascertained, he put it in his pocket. “It will only cause talk if you wear it tonight. I’ll give it back to you later.”

Then we stood looking at each other. Neither of us had anything to say, but there was a great feeling of self-consciousness in the room. What was not said was as speaking as words.
This changes everything
was the feeling. It was a very dismal feeling, indeed.

“Shall we have that waltz?” I asked, with an air of indifference.

“Why not, Miss Trelawney?” he replied. We returned to the ballroom and enjoyed a bittersweet dance, during which neither of us said a word but were minutely aware of the closeness of the other. The first time I had been in his arms for more than a second, and it would in all probability be the last. How good it felt, and how sad.

“We’ll talk later,” he said when the dance was over, as Mr. Heltern began hastening towards me. Ludwig hadn’t even the heart to look angry.

It was an interminable evening. I didn’t miss a single dance. Some feeling of doom and damnation was upon me, whose dispersal required me to be gay almost to the point of ill-breeding. In the eyes of the McCurdles I went a good deal beyond that point, I could see. I found myself laughing and flirting with all manner of scarecrows, most of whom seemed very out of place at a polite party, but then they were country relatives, unpolished diamonds, no doubt. When the supper was over—that supper over which I had slaved, at least mentally— when the musicians had gone off home and the last of the guests departed to their bedchambers or their homes, Abigail, Annie and myself and Sir Ludwig stood in the hallway, breathing a weary sigh of relief.

“I’m for bed,” Annie said, stifling a yawn.

“You run along too, Abbie. I want to speak to Rose,” Kessler said.

She twinkled a tired smile at us and ran up the stairs after her cousin. Servants were cleaning away a welter of glasses and hors d’oeuvres plates in the once green, now blue Saloon. “We’ll go to my study,” Ludwig said, and I followed him there, wondering what he would say.

He closed the door behind us and drew the ring out of his pocket, looking at it with a face showing much the same cheated feeling I felt myself. I reached out for it, not that I wanted it, to be sure. He took my left hand in his and slid it on the appropriate finger. I had no memory of anyone’s having done that before, yet someone probably had, in a church, surrounded by my friends and the clergy. He grabbed my hand impulsively and raised it to his lips. “We don’t really
know,
Rose,” he said uncertainly.

I was more angry than sorry. How dare fate cheat me out of this moment? He was as well as saying he loved me, wanted to say it I knew, and I was strongly inclined to hear the words, even if I was married, which was very wrong of me, of course.

I proceeded to try to weasel it out of him. “What difference would it make anyway?” I asked, adopting a pout. “The behavior of your relatives towards me has made it perfectly clear . . .”

“Don’t be foolish,” he scoffed, squeezing my hand quite painfully.

 “I suppose you mean me to understand that if it weren’t for this ring you would be offering marriage to a stray picked up off the streets.”

“No, no, picked up at a rectory—much more respectable.”

“I doubt very much I am respectable. I probably ran away from him, whoever he is. Maybe I’m divorced,” I mentioned hopefully.

“Maybe you were never married at all. We don’t even know the ring came from the cloak—
borrowed
cloak, you wore. We must start advertising at once. It is foolish to have waited so long.”

“I see you are eager to be rid of me,” I said, trying to goad him into some sort of declaration, however vain the effort.

“Rose Trelawney, you are quite shameless,” he declared, “and so am I.” He swept me into his arms and kissed me more resoundingly than I had intended, and I had planned on more than a peck on the cheek. “Now that is what I would do if I were sure you aren’t a married lady,” he said, his lips against my ear and his voice unsteady.

Suddenly I was sure, absolutely positive. The ring I had forgotten, but not these sensations stirring within me. I pulled abruptly away, flustered and embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” he said, surprised. “I thought you—expected it.”

“I did.” Oh but I hadn’t expected this sudden onrush of knowledge, this cold certainty that I had every right to the ring I wore. I felt it with the fingers of my right hand, frowning at the sudden memories that washed over me.

“Rose—really there is no reason to assume you are married. There are a dozen possibilities to account for the ring.”

“No, it belongs to me.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I
do
know it.”

“How the hell can you be so sure of that, when you’ve forgotten everything else?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure. Good night.”

He didn’t answer, but remained behind, frowning darkly. I lay awake for hours myself that night, but I didn’t hear Sir Ludwig come upstairs.

Chapter Twelve

We were busy the next day with guests departing, and
setting the house to rights after the party. I was treated with all the deference owing to a married lady by Sir Ludwig, and as if the ring had never been found by the other two. They looked at it, shrugged their shoulders, and said it might have come from anywhere.

“Imagine the rectory not being cleaned out for a month,” was Annie’s comment. I didn’t say so, but I wondered how many months it had been since the collection of boxes beneath her bed had been disturbed.

“Didn’t old Mrs. Wickey, when she was alive, wear a ring like that?” Abbie asked her brother, who heartily supported this spurious memory. As if Miss Wickey wouldn’t recognize her own mother’s wedding ring! In fact, I believe she wore a gold band on her right hand.

In the late afternoon we prepared an advertisement for the papers and discussed in what cities it ought to be placed. We chose the largest centers in the four corners of the kingdom, along with Edinburgh and Glasgow.

We agreed that before it would reach the papers, be circulated and any enquiries made to us, we might expect a lapse of a couple of weeks. The next day the guests were all gone, leaving behind a sense of letdown. It was back to routine, French in the mornings, painting, reading, music. I finished Abbie’s portrait and we had a showing in my studio for the family, honoring the occasion with a bottle of champagne. As I mentioned, Abbie was posed as a nymph in a diaphanous piece of drapery. She stood with a hand on the corner of a Greek statue, the other holding a dove. It turned out rather well. I was pleased with the job. In a gilt frame it might even do for a wall in some not too conspicuous room.

Annie stood with her arms folded regarding it. “Why hasn’t she got on some decent clothes? You ought to have worn your ballgown, ninny.”

“Don’t I look pretty, Lud?” Abbie asked.

“The portrait is beautiful,” he decided, regarding it critically.

“I hadn’t quite the acres of flesh to work with that your friend Rubens had,” I pointed out, trying to get him back into his former mood of jokes and insults.

“Professional, I would say.” He looked at me, questioningly. “I wonder if you aren’t known as an artist.”

But there were no well-known female artists in the kingdom, so I was not likely to find my name by that means, if that was what he had in mind.

Annie began hinting outrageously that I should render her face in oils. What a task! But a challenge—it would be interesting. I ran in my mind over Hogarth’s Gin Alley for a likely pose. “I should be happy to, Annie, but you must buy the materials yourself. I don’t wish to fall any deeper into debt. I already owe another couple of guineas for the newspaper ads.”

“No doubt your husband will be happy to repay the entire debt,” he answered, without even a smile. He was being polite to me, damn his eyes.

I outlined the size of canvas I wished, really my sole requirement as I had a good supply of pigments. As I held out my hands to approximate the width, I noticed him looking at my left hand, to see if I wore the ring. I never put it on, but I often took it out of the drawer when alone and looked at it.

“You don’t wear the ring?” he asked later, when Abbie and Annie were off chattering over the portrait.

“No, I don’t.”

“I’m surprised it isn’t mentioned in the village. Miss Wickey must have kept it to herself.”

“Ashamed of her housekeeping, I expect,” I answered.

“I’m surprised you didn’t turn the place out while you were there.”

I can’t tell you how my heart soared at this speech. It was the first
normal
speech he had made since the night of the party.

“Oh but it
was
cleaned once a month, you see, so I left it alone. It is only when I enter a room as chaotic as in a painting by Jan Steen that I exert myself.”