Susan Speers (30 page)

 “I said I’d always love you.” His cold face never changed. “When I turned from you to marry Caroline and save Hethering, I made a terrible mistake. But I was young, and I didn’t know all the facts. When you wouldn’t fight for me, wouldn’t fight with me, holding full knowledge, you destroyed our second chance.”

“And I’m the only one to blame? You say you weren’t there.”

He blinked and his pale face darkened with his lie exposed between us.

“I want you to think on how Arthur found his way through the Marchgate Wood,” I said. “Did he set off on his own? Or did he follow —”

Chase entered the room. “Ah, disaster after all. I saw you, Jeremy, in the ballroom. I told Clarry to leave early. I hoped to avoid an awkward scene. Do I interrupt one?” His lips smiled, his eyes didn’t.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Let’s go.” I didn’t look back, I couldn’t bear to see what I left behind.

*****

We didn’t speak on the way home. Chase drove with quiet expertise, though automobiles from a neighborhood party caused us to park a distance from Genie’s door. I lifted my face for his kiss, but he hesitated. “Not tonight,” he said. “Jeremy’s still in your eyes.” He patted my cheek and left to find his car.

My key glinted in the palm of my hand, but I didn’t use it. I entered the little park instead and found a bench washed by moonlight. I sat very still, for once empty of emotion, breathing in the quiet night. A nearby flowerbed sent its delicious perfume my way.

The Eastern religions embrace nirvana, a perfect peace of the empty mind. It seemed an attractive state to me that night, but I didn’t achieve it.

In the distance I heard a muffled thud and an “oof”, and then a whispered “bloody hell”. A moment later, Chase walked up the path and stopped in front of me.

“I was wrong to leave you like that,” he said. “I don’t like leaving you, tonight most of all.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“When I came to my senses, I turned just in time to see you walk around the corner. I guessed you’d be here, gardens comfort you.”

“Yes, that’s true, but how did you — you didn’t climb the railings?” They were topped with cruel points.

“I did, and with ease. My army training wasn’t wasted after all.”

“But I heard you fall.”

“I’m fine, though when my man sees the rent in these trousers, that condition may alter.”

“Let me see,” I spoke without thinking.

“Modesty forbids. Now look here, Clarry, I didn’t risk life and limb to discuss mending.”

“What then?”

“I had a conversation in mind for us this evening. I quite forgot it when your cousin appeared.”

“I’m sorry.” That was true in so many ways.

“I don’t dislike Jeremy, Clarry. I pity him — for his loss.”

I couldn’t answer. Chase sat down next to me and tilted my chin up. “Don’t look back, darling,” he said. “Your future is in front of you.” His kiss held all the possibilities of his music. I closed my eyes and gave way to pure sensation.

“Well,” he said, when we paused to catch our breath. “That was rather more like it.” He took his watch from his pocket and undid the fob. In his hand was a platinum ring set with two diamonds and a sapphire. “Blue and silver like your pretty dress.”

He put it in my hand. “Shall we marry, Clarissa? I will see you happy.”

I gave him back the ring. After a moment I held out my left hand. He slid the ring into place, a perfect fit. Chase never got it wrong.

“
He’s Still in Your Eyes
” was published a month later. I never mentioned it to Chase, I couldn’t listen to its haunting melody.

London society was thrilled by our engagement. We went to party after party given in our honor. I was afraid to confront Daisy, but she was sweet to us when we met at a cocktail party. After Chase was borne off to the piano, though, a bitter cast tainted her rouged smile.

“Have you told Jeremy, yet?”

I shook my head, it was impossible to imagine the conversation.

“Just as well, darling. His little boy is ill.”

“Arthur? Do you know what’s wrong?”

“Influenza, poor lamb. I haven’t heard another word.”

*

I lay awake until the pearly light of dawn filtered through my bedroom draperies. I’d mourned the possibilities of a happy life with Jeremy. I didn’t realize being barred from sharing his trouble, surely not his grief, was harder.

No one spoke to me about Jeremy’s child, of course they knew better than to mention his name. I was in limbo, my prayers so imprecise as to be useless.

*

“What’s the matter, darling?” Chase brought me Parisian chocolates and sugar pink roses. “You don’t regret our madcap plan?”

“I don’t,” I said, and let his kisses carry me away.

“I can’t wait six months,” he said. “Marry me next week or we’ll be a scandal.”

“Next month,” I said, rearranging my clothes. If I waited too long, I might change my mind.

A week later, I hurried through Kensington Gardens, Jeremy’s letter in my hand. He asked for a meeting, though he wrote he’d understand if I declined.

He waited by the statue of Queen Victoria, his tall thin figure unmistakable through the mist as I came up the Broad Walk.

“Thank you for meeting me,” he said. We looked at each other, blinking as if the light hurt our eyes, though the skies were overcast. “I wanted to —”

“I didn’t know Arthur was ill,” I said.

“He’s better now. He suffered so dreadfully, though, it seemed almost wrong to keep him with us. He’s recovering in the south of France, with his mother and his doctor.”

“Dr. Redstone? Caroline mentioned him to me.”

“Yes. He fought with Arthur hour after hour, while I waited, useless, in the corridor. I won’t separate them.”

I was dizzy with relief and thankfulness, but he had more to say.

“I must apologize, Clarissa, for the way I behaved at our last meeting.”

“We were both — surprised,” I said.

“And I want to thank you, with all my heart, for knowing my place is with Arthur, for giving me these last months with him.”

“And there will be more,” I said.

“Yes. We need more. The war’s separation left — a distance.”

I wondered about Caroline’s influence, I wondered if she interfered between them. I said nothing.

“Daisy tells me you will marry Chase Gordon,” he said. We walked on past the statue and stopped by the gate to the Sunken Garden.

“Yes, that’s true.” It was better not to say more. I looked instead through iron bars at the garden’s perfect plantings.

“You know I wish you happy.” Was his voice that of a drowning man, or was it the roaring in my ears that distorted it?

I didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at me. When I turned to speak again, he was gone.

*****

Chase and I were married at the registry office and shared a festive breakfast with Genie and her general, our only witnesses. Chase whisked me away to Landsdowne, a sentimental choice for us, and a fruitful one too. We stayed on through the summer months.

My new husband was a skilled lover and I was a happy bride because I was ruthless in expunging Jeremy from my thoughts. I couldn’t turn him out of my heart, but I told myself I’d grow used to divided loyalties.

Chase filled my nights with pleasure and my days with lazy freedom. He kissed me goodbye at the breakfast table and shut himself away at the piano until his solitary afternoon walk. I spent the days sketching and writing and dozing on the porch. I played the piano while Chase hiked the seaside cliffs. We shared cocktails instead of tea then ran back and forth at the ocean’s edge while the sun set, shrieking and shouting when waves caught our feet.

He liked to sit in the salon after dinner, smoking one cigarette after another, while I played the music he wrote that day. “You make it sound so much better than it is,” he teased. “Are you sure it’s that good?”

I answered with a few bars of my ragtime version of
Landsdowne
and he chased me around the grand piano and up the stairs. But no matter how rapturous our lovemaking, he slept in his own corner of the enormous bed and I in mine.

Chase was a mercurial spirit, uncomfortable with true intimacy, I think he saved that for his music. I’d been widowed, I’d been wounded by my first and forever love time and again. Chase’s light touch was a balm to my bruised spirits. There was time for us to grow closer, I thought. Right now, he was nothing but fun, and I loved him for it.

I wrote to Amalia and Laura and Thérèse and received their happy wishes and thoughtful wedding gifts. “Is there anyone I should write to in America?” I asked Chase one morning over breakfast. He’d never mentioned family other than Ronald.

“Not a one,” he replied, a kind of curtain closing behind his grey blue eyes. “We’re quite estranged. They want a banker or a gentleman. To them, music is only something you patronize, never dirty your fingers to create.”

“Is your father living?” He never mentioned him or a step-mother.

“How you do pester a fellow,” he rose to leave. His kiss didn’t quite touch my cheek. “He wants nothing to do with me. When I didn’t return to his ‘proper’ life after the war, he gave me up.”

“We’re orphans, you and I,” he called over his shoulder. “We belong to each other.”

I took my last cup of coffee out to the porch and sat, thinking, while I drank it. Chase was more complicated than he let on. But I was his wife and it was my duty to make him happy. The light touch now, reconciliation with his family in due time.

*****

I waited until we returned to London to tell Chase our honeymoon in Landsdowne had been even more productive than we thought.

We were dining at the little table in the window of the hotel suite he used as a flat. Waiters brought our dinner under silver covers and left us to it, a generous tip in their pockets.

“We’ll have to find a bigger flat in the new year,” I said with an eager smile that belied my casual tone.

“But, darling, you can have the second bedroom for your study,” Chase said. His man “The window overlooks the park.”

“But where will the baby sleep?” I asked, and waited.

“Baby? We don’t have —” He stopped, and an odd look came over his face. “Clarry, you’re not expecting a —”

“We’re expecting, darling,” I said.

“What?” He looked stunned. “How did it happen? Well, of course I know how, but I never thought — Clarissa, are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said. I’d had my second consultation with the doctor that morning. He assured me, in spite of my earlier miscarriage, I had every reason to expect a healthy child. “Chase, aren’t you happy about the baby?”

A quick smile was my reward. “Of course, darling, I’m simply amazed.”

Amazed and startled, I thought.

“We’ll engage the hotel’s largest suite,” he said. “It’s two floors up, and we’ll want a room for the baby’s nurse.”

Like most men, Chase was a creature of habit. I could see him adjust to our new addition with less difficulty if we stayed where we were.

“I’ll rent a single room on the top floor, for my music,” he mused aloud. “We don’t want endless crying.”

“If his father’s a composer,” I said, “he’ll grow accustomed to noise.”

“You know, Clarry,” Chase said. “I’m not sure I can see myself with a son. A little girl now, the image of you, that would be so lovely.” He refilled my wine glass. “Let’s drink a toast to our daughter.”

“To our baby.” Boy or girl, I didn’t care, so long as he or she was healthy.

My pregnancy was unremarkable. I suffered only a little morning sickness, and when I passed the fourth month of gestation, I felt marvelous. I spent hours buying new sacque dresses to hide my expanding waistline. I was too superstitious to buy baby things, but Amalia assured me she was hard at work on a layette.

I think Chase minded the loss of my figure more than I. He sighed with regret as my dresses grew more and more voluminous. He brought me flowers almost every day and with them came little gifts of jewelry, semi precious stones in the art deco settings so popular in Paris. The necklaces and dangling earrings drew the eye from my rather dumpy silhouette to my happy face.

I often left parties early with our driver, leaving Chase to entertain our friends and walk home after midnight. I’d drop into a delicious sleep at nine or ten in the evening, and wake at three in the morning to hear Chase at the piano. His melodies infiltrated my dreams. I waited to hear a baby song or lullaby, but there was none. I decided to be patient. When the baby was born, Chase would fall in love all over again.

*****

I liked to visit Lady Anne’s portrait just before the gallery closed. There were few visitors, and I found quiet communion with my ancestor. One weekday, though, I had a breakthrough with Willow’s story and friends were unavailable to celebrate with me. I climbed the broad staircases with a heavy tread. My pregnancy was evident even in my walking suit.

When I entered Lady Anne’s room, my bench was occupied. Jeremy and Arthur sat side by side, their backs to me. I cleared my throat.

Jeremy rose, his smile poignant in its surprise and pleasure.

“That I would find you here,” I said, shaking Arthur’s hand. Jeremy had introduced me as ‘Mrs. Gordon’.

“We like the curlicue bench,” Arthur said. “Papa says it’s his favorite in the entire gallery.”

“It is very fine,” I sat down. My legs trembled from climbing the stairs.

“You know this lady’s portrait?” Jeremy asked.

“Rutherford Dane brought me here. Lady Anne Wealing is my great grandmother.”

“I have observed, um, many similarities.” Jeremy knew things about my body Rutherford could only guess at.

“So you’ve found a way,” to abide with me, I meant.

“There’s always a way,” he said. “At first it seemed impossible. Then one day, there you were in your regency costume.”

“I find you in my writing,” I said. “In Willow’s loving, her bewilderment at loss, her lifelong fidelity.”