Silverbridge (15 page)

“They seem fine now,” Harry said, and started up the path again. She moved to join him, and together, yet apart, they continued toward the house.

Tracy went right to her room, closing the door and going to stand at the window, her forehead pressed against the glass.

Scotty,
she thought.
What is happening to me? Why am I feeling this way about this particular man?

She knew that if Harry had asked to come to her room, she would have said yes, and the possibility of that yes had turned her world upside down. The fact of the matter was, in this age where sex was regarded as free entertainment rather than a sign of commitment, Tracy had never slept with anyone in her life except Scotty.

Her Hollywood friends couldn’t believe her prudery, and over the years she had developed an assortment of reasons to explain her behavior, both to others and to herself. She didn’t want to get a sexually transmitted disease; she didn’t want to get pregnant and no birth control method was foolproof; her Church taught that sex without marriage was a sin. All of these reasons she presented as perfectly legitimate motives to explain and justify her failing to fulfill what her friends called “her sexual needs.”

The actual truth underlying her behavior was very simple: She hadn’t been tempted.

Tracy had loved Scotty and had loved making love with him. They had laughed and loved and been intimate in every way possible, physically as well as emotionally. Every man she had met since his death had seemed a stranger, and she just could not bring herself to do with a stranger the things that she had done with Scotty.

Then this man had come along. And he was pushing Scotty aside.

She felt tears sting her eyes.
I don’t even have your picture in my bedroom anymore.

In fact, the Westport photography studio had kept the negatives of her wedding and had promised to make up a new picture and send it to her. But in the turmoil of emotion that was besetting her, all she could think of was that she wanted to look at Scotty at that moment, and she couldn’t.

Could it be possible that there is a link between Harry and me that goes back in time?

But if that were so, if the visions were connected in some way to her and Harry, why did she see them and he did not?

Perhaps it was because she was more receptive to them, she thought. She remembered vividly the scoffing way he had treated her inquiries about ghosts, and thought that perhaps his own skepticism was acting as a barrier between him and whatever message Charles and Isabel were meant to convey.

She knocked on the bathroom door, to make certain that Meg wasn’t there, and then she took a shower, blow-dried her hair, and put on her ivory satin pajamas. When she came out of the bathroom, she went to the
window. She had just pushed aside the curtain to look out at the moonlit night, when her eye was caught by a shado
wy figure walking around the corn
er of the house.

She threw up the window and leaned out in an effort to see who it was, but in the brief moment it took to do this, the figure had disappeared.

Tracy’s heart began to dram.
What was that all about? Is someone sneaking around in the dark, planning another act of sabotage?

Without further thought, she ran down the hall to the morning room to see if Harry was there. He was, and she blurted out what she had seen and what she feared.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go look.”

She went to the front window and looked out, and in a few moments she saw Harry come around the co
rn
er of the building. He was holding a flashlight, which he swiveled around the lawn, searching for anything that looked out of place. Apparently he found nothing, because he turned and started back in the direction of the side entrance. It was not long before Tracy heard his feet on the staircase.

“No sign of anyone,” he said as he came into the room. “Perhaps you imagined it.”

“I don’t think so,” Tracy said. She had left the front window and was standing in the middle of the morning room floor, her hands clasped together anxiously.

Harry’s brown eyes moved from her mouth, to her breasts, to her hips. “Pretty pajamas,” he said.

Tracy suddenly realized that he thought she had planned this scene in order to seduce him. Fury flooded through her. “I am so sorry I troubled you, my lord,” she
said in an acid voice. “I won’t take any more of your precious time.”

In order to get to the door she had to pass him, which she prepared to do with chin up and body rigid.

“Tracy,” he said and r
eached a hand toward her satin-
clad arm.

She wrenched it away from him. “Good night!” she said angrily, and then she was past him and on the way to the safety of her room.

15

W
hen Tracy woke in the morning, her anger was gone and what was left was a determination to find out more about Charles and Isabel.

I need to see them again. I need to understand why they are appearing to me.

Perhaps the apparitions were simply to let her know about some previous link between her and Harry. Perhaps their purpose was to alert her to the fact that he was her destiny.

Her lips curved in a wry smile.
Destiny. How Scotty would laugh at me.

She glanced at the alarm clock on her bedside table and saw that it wasn’t due to ring for another hour. She debated about whether or not to stay in bed, and decided she was wide-awake and wouldn’t get any more sleep. She stretched her arms over her head, yawned, turned off the alarm, got out of bed, and went into the bathroom.

It was while she was dressing that the idea occurred to her that she use the extra hour to explore the rest of the house. The apparitions seemed to appear in the same places where the initial action had occurred almost a century ago, and Tracy thought,
It’s highly unlikely that Charles would have met the governess in the bedroom wing of the house. That is probably why I have never seen them in any of the rooms of the family apartment. I need to go into the public rooms—like the upstairs drawing room, where I once saw them.

She zipped up her jeans, thrust her feet into leather moccasins, and checked the corridor to see if it was clear. It was, and she went purposefully to the door that connected the apartment to the upstairs drawing room, pushed it open, and went in.

This time the room was empty. Tracy crossed to a set of beautifully molded double doors, pushed them open, and for the first time she stepped into the part of Silverbridge where Charles had lived and that today was viewed only by the public two months out of the year.

A large, picture-lined foyer showed off a magnificently carved staircase that descended to the lower level. Tracy went downstairs slowly, glancing up once to admire the splendid crystal chandelier that hung over the staircase well.

On a later visit she would marvel at the collection of paintings that hung on the walls of Silverbridge: the set of four history paintings by Angelica Kauffmann in the staircase hall, the two Van Dykes in the library, the large Constable in one of the drawing rooms, the two Claude landscapes in the dining room, the Titian and the three Velazquez portraits in one salon, the two Turners in a
second and in another the full-length picture by Reynolds over the fireplace which showed the Athenian courtesan Thais urging Alexander the Great to bu
rn
the Persian royal palace at Persepolis. On a later visit she would marvel at the ceilings by Joseph Rose and Antonio Zucchi, the chimneypieces by Thomas Carter and the hundred-year-old carpets by Aubusson. She would admire the Chippendale furniture, the armorial trophies on the walls of the entrance hall, the elegant frieze in the staircase hall. But for the moment, the house was secondary in her thoughts. She was searching for Charles.

She found him in the library, standing in front of a beautiful chimneypiece, which boasted two inset carved marble panels. The woman with him was not Isabel, however. She was older, with pale hair cut in the short feathery style of the Regency, and she was wearing a long blue empire-style dress. She was standing in front of Charles, and the rigid set of her shoulders spoke of anger.

“I want Isabel to leave,” the woman said in a tight, hard voice. “She can go to one of her other cousins.”

Charles was dressed in a riding coat, which made his shoulders look very broad, and the expression on his face was wary as he regarded the woman who must be his wife. “Why should she go, Caroline?” he asked in well-acted surprise. “She’s doing a wonderful job. The children adore her.”

“It’s not the children’s adoration that worries me,” the woman replied bitterly.

The wariness in his brown eyes deepened. “What do you mean?”

The woman threw up her head. “You know perfectly
well what I mean, Charles. You are enamored of her! I will not be cheated on in my own house. Nor will I agree to a
ménage á
trois,
like poor Georgiana Devonshire was forced to do.”

His face grew hard, the way Tracy had seen Harry’s do. “You are being absurd, Caroline. And insulting. If you think that I would take advantage of a young girl living under my protection, you don’t know me very well.”

She narrowed her eyes in irony. “I rather think it is the other way around, Charles, and it’s sweet, helpless little Isabel who is taking advantage of you.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Now he was openly angry.

“No, it’s not, only you’re too besotted to see it. I want her out of this house, Charles. Do you hear me?” A note of incipient hysteria had crept into her voice.

His expression was grim. “She has nowhere to go!”

“That’s not my concern. I took her in, gave her a home, entrusted her with my children, and she repays me by trying to steal my husband. Well, I won’t have it, Charles. Get rid of her, or I’ll throw her out myself.” And on that note she turned away from him, went by Tracy, then out of the room.

Tracy felt her passing as a rush of cool air.

Left alone, Charles turned to face the fireplace. He put his hands on the mantelpiece and bowed his head. From where she stood, Tracy could see the tendons standing stark in his hands, so tightly was he gripping the wood.

She wondered what would happen if she spoke to him.

“Charles,” she said softly.

There was no change in his posture.

She tried again, more sharply. “Charles!”

Still nothing. He couldn’t see her, and he couldn’t hear her either.

He stood thus for a long time, and Tracy stood watching him. Then he straightened away from the mantel and walked steadily toward the door. She watched as he went out and thought that she had been right about another thing. He did not walk with the catlike agility of Harry. He walked like a soldier.

T
racy reported to makeup a few minutes early, then went back to her dressing room to wait until she was called. As Gail had promised, she was already there with a stack of letters that needed Tracy’s signature. As Tracy finished signing the last one, Gail said, “It seems strange to see you without Meg in tow.”

Tracy glanced sharply at her secretary to see how she meant those words. Gail’s face was not wearing the ironic look that Tracy knew all too we
ll; instead, she looked grave. “
Talk about the quintessential poor little rich kid,” she said. “The things she let out yesterday about her childhood were enough to curdle my blood.” Tracy sighed. “When you are not loved when you are young, damage is done that is sometimes irreparable.”

“We didn’t have any money, but we all knew that we were loved,” Gail replied. “I guess when you look at it that way, I was luckier than Meg.”

“You were,” Tracy agreed. “Her brother is sending her to a therapist, and the woman told him that having this movie on the property has been beneficial to Meg.
It’s given her something to think about besides the scale.”

“Ah yes,” Gail said. “Her brother.” She arched an eyebrow. “I presume you mean Lord Silverbridge and not the younger one?”

Tracy spread her skirts carefully and sat down on the chair in front of her mirror. “Lord Silverbridge is her guardian.”

“He has something you rarely see in a man these days,” Gail said. She was sitting on the sofa stuffing letters into envelopes.

“What do you mean?” Tracy asked curiously.

Gail looked up and frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t say exactly. It’s not that he’s good-looking or sexy—though he is both of those things. But there are thousands of good-looki
ng, sexy men in the world. It’s…
oh I don’t know, but whatever it is, he has it.”

“He’s an earl,” Tracy said.

“What does that have to do with it?” Gail went back to stuffing envelopes with the recently signed letters.

“Everything. He has always been absolutely sure of himself and his position in the world. It’s part of who he is. He’s an earl.”

“That sounds very castelike,” Gail said. She stuffed the last envelope and stacked them so she could put a rubber band around them.

“England is still a caste-ridden society,” Tracy said. “Much more so than America.”

A knock sounded on the trailer door, and a male voice called, “They’re ready for you, Miss Collins.”

“
Thank you,” she called back. She checked her
makeup in the mirror, picked up a sweater to wear over her light Regency dress, and went out the door.

T
he morning’s shoot was of one of the most crucial scenes in the film. It came at the point when Martin is almost certain that his wife is betraying him with other men, and for the first time he verbalizes his suspicions. Julia denies his accusations vehemently, and the scene ends with a kiss that had been one of the central moments of the book and needed to be one of the central moments of the film.

Dave took them over the scene before they started. “Jon, this scene is very important for Martin. He is almost convinced by now that Julia is being unfaithful to him, but he is still very sexually attracted to her. He resents this attraction, he wants to break free of it, but he can’t. This is the scene that shows all of his conflicts. He begins by accusing her, he grows angry as he listens to her deny his accusations, he wants to throw her out of his house and out of his life, but when she appeals to him physically, he can’t resist her. His feelings at the end of the scene are frustration, desperation, and pure unadulterated lust. Do you have that?”

“Yes,” Jon said.

The day was cloudy, the weather forecast was predicting rain in the afternoon, and Dave was anxious to get the shoot done before that happened. “All right, Tracy,” he said. “This is a pivotal scene for your character as well. For the first time we see clearly that Julia is aware of her sexual power, and when she uses this power to quiet her husband’s suspicions, the whole
question of which of them is in control of the other comes to the fore.”

“Yes,” Tracy said. In fact, long before she had attended the first read-through of the script, Tracy had determined to play Julia as a young girl who had been awakened to passion by her husband and who gradually comes to realize the power her sexual magnetism gives her over men. In Tracy’s view, Julia was innocent of the infidelity with which her husband charged her, but she was guilty of being a sexual tease.

And that was the tragedy, in Tracy’s opinion. A young girl, a nineteenth-century young girl, brought up to consider herself powerless, a pawn of men, discovers that she possesses this marvelous power over the superior beings who have ruled her life. She exercises this power unwisely and thus brings about her own downfall.

The book and the film deliberately left Julia’s culpability open to question. Was she or was she not guilty? But in Tracy’s mind, Julia was an innocent who was destroyed not just by her husband, but by the society that had made her what she was.

“Great,” Dave said. “Let’s get rolling then.”

They shot the scene once. From the first word that he spoke, Jon conveyed such a sense of barely controlled menace that Tracy could easily play off it. Confronted by an angry, threatening male, Julia would have instinctively reassured and placated. After her initial indignant denials of her husband’s accusations, she would attempt to appease him by exercising the only power she had ever had over men.

“Truly, my lord,” Tracy said in a soft, breathless voice,
“you
are the one that I love.” She lifted her
lashes, and the brief glimpse she had of Jon’s angry face caused her to take one step away from him. Then, determined to be brave, she retraced that step and lifted her hand to touch his lapel. “I do not know why you should make these accusations against me.” She allowed her eyes to fill with tears. “They hurt me.”

Angrily, he thrust her hand from his lapel. “My words can’t hurt you any more than your behavior has hurt me.” His voice was deeply bitter.

Tracy blinked so that two tears would roll down her face. “You are my
husband,
my lord. You know well that I was innocent when I came to your bed. How can you believe that I would dishonor the vows that I made to you?”

Jon was looking at her with an expression of mixed bafflement and fury. She cupped his face in her hands and lifted her own face to him. “I would never betray you, my lord.” She let her teeth rest on her lower lip, calling attention to the lushness of her mouth. “Truly,” she breathed.

Jon gave a groan like a wounded animal, reached out, and crushed her to him. Then his mouth, hard, ravaging, punishing, came down on hers.

It was a frightening kiss, and when he finally released her, Tracy tasted blood. She backed away from him and lifted her hand to her mouth.

“How did you like that, madam?” Jon said dangerously. “Would you care to continue this encounter in our bedroom?”

Tracy’s heart was pounding, and she stared at the blood that stained her fingers. That kiss had been much more than she expected.

I’m frightened,
she thought.
I’m frightened, and my only safety lies in making him want me.