The Ashford Affair (25 page)

“I’m sorry.” It sounded painfully inadequate.

“I am, too,” he said. “It’s a bloody waste. The War got into his head. He couldn’t stick it. So he stuck his head in an oven instead.”

Bea couldn’t think of anything at all to say.

“God help poor old Cartwright.” Desborough shook his head and the rest of his body swayed with him. “He wanted to translate Dante. Instead, he found himself in Inferno, without a Beatrice to help him find his way out.” He looked meaningfully at Bea.

Bea wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about, but one thing was very clear. “Don’t look to me to rescue you,” she said tartly. “I’m too busy making a muck of my own affairs to bother with ruining anyone else’s.”

Desborough raised a brow. “With one notable exception. Your cousin.”

That was different; Addie was Bea’s in a way that no one else was hers. Addie needed her, had needed her ever since that night she had been presented to the nursery at Ashford, all tousled hair and confusion. She’d needed Bea to tell her how to get on then and she still needed Bea to tell her how to get on now.

Not that it was any of Desborough’s business, with his ridiculous ideas about jealousy. As if she were jealous of Addie’s friends! Addie was the one who relied on her, not the other way around. She’d be delighted if Addie found someone, someone nice and kind and patient who’d take care of her, a schoolmaster, perhaps, or a budding parson. Addie would make an excellent vicar’s wife. Not now, of course, but by and by.

“Isn’t there something about the exception that proves the rule?” Bea said flippantly. “Addie hasn’t anyone else to look after her. I’ll need at least one good deed if I’m to get into heaven.”

“And she’s your good deed? She might resent that.”

Bea bristled. “She certainly can’t be trusted to look after herself. She hasn’t a worldly bone in her body, poor darling.”

Mr. Desborough leaned back against the wall, regarding her with open amusement. “So you’ve set yourself up as guardian of her virtue?”

Bea frowned at him. “You make it sound positively medieval. Let’s just say that I help to weed out the rotters.”

That took the smug look off his face. “Meaning me.”

Bea shrugged her bare shoulders. “You said it, not I.”

He raised his brows. “You have more wit than you pretend.”

“Thank you for your glorious condescension.” Bea blew out a long plume of smoke. “Speaking of my cousin, you appear to have given her a crashing headache. What
did
you say to her?”

“I told her to get shot of me. I told her I was a bad lot. In short, I performed your office for you.”

“How surprisingly accommodating of you.” Bea leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Why?”

He rested the back of his head against the wall and stared out above the dancers. “Call it a lingering trace of decency. When I’m with her, I feel like one of those poor beggars trying to warm themselves by someone else’s fire, scrounging for a bit of borrowed light. There are no dark corners to her soul. She just is what she is and that’s all. She believes in things.”

“Mmm,” said Bea. If what he meant was that Addie had failed to master the use of maquillage and joined various groups for the support or the prevention of this and that, well, then, yes, all that was true.

Mr. Desborough was off in his own reverie. “When I talk to her, I feel like an undergraduate again, back when everything was simple and the world made sense. She almost makes me believe in the things I used to believe in. Before.” He gave a bitter laugh. “But that’s an illusion, a dangerous one. I don’t know that I’ll stick my head in an oven, like old Ken, but one of these days something is going to crack.”

“And you don’t want it to crack near her.” Bea felt as though she were glimpsing something she hadn’t suspected existed, like a primordial beast lifting its head out of a swamp. There was something vaguely unsettling about it. “How terribly chivalric of you.”

Mr. Desborough went on without seeming to hear her. “She has so much bloody faith. Do you know, she really believes you can bring peace to the world with poetry? Then there’s that bally magazine of hers—”

“That what?” Bea asked sharply.

Mr. Desborough looked at her as though just seeing her. “She didn’t tell you? Then it’s not for me.” He cocked an eyebrow. “She might have thought you wouldn’t be interested.”

Touché. Bea shrugged, pretending a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “To each her own.”

And to each his own. From their vantage point, she had a clear view of the table where Marcus and Bunny sat with Euan and Barbie Wallace. Bunny turned up her face to Marcus, and he brushed his lips across hers, right there, in public.

There was a waiter passing with a tray. Bea helped herself to another drink. “That used to be my own,” she said indistinctly.

“What?” said Mr. Desborough, leaning forward and overbalancing slightly.

Bea caught his arm to steady him, or herself, she wasn’t sure which. How many cocktails had she had? She’d lost track. She might, just might, be a little tipsier than she’d thought.

“Over there,” she said thickly. “No, that table, the other one, behind the potted apple tree. Do you know who that is?”

“Lord Kitchener?”

“My husband. In theory.” Bea upended her drink and looked about for another one. Mr. Desborough obligingly handed her his. “In practice, he’s not much of one.”

“Who’s the woman?” asked Desborough.

Their little alcove felt a bit like a confessional, quiet and dark. And if she was this drunk, Bea told herself, Frederick Desborough had to be drunker. He wouldn’t remember a thing she had said in the morning. And it was such a relief to be able to say something to someone, instead of pretending to be happy, happy, happy all the time.

“Bunny ffoulkes,” said Bea. “Her older sister Lavinia made a go for him, but I won. But then Bunny moved in.…”

Who would have thought this could happen? They were married. Married. That was supposed to mean something, not eternal devotion, Bea didn’t believe in that, but at least a modicum of discretion in conducting one’s affairs; that was what her parents’ generation had practiced. One could borrow someone else’s spouse, but one always returned him in the end; the rules were very clear about that. But now … But now …

“She means to marry him,” said Bea abruptly. “It’s quite clear.”

“Shouldn’t you have her eyes out, then?” She could feel Mr. Desborough’s breath as a puff against her ear, not unpleasantly scented with gin.

“Too obvious. Besides, it would only engender sympathy. I’d be the Belle Dame sans Merci while she’d be all pure and lily white.” Bea shook out her blue silk skirt with unnecessary vehemence. “Vile little vamp. It’s too, too sick making.”

“You’re going about it all wrong,” said Mr. Desborough.

“And you would know how?” Bea gave him a superior look. “Is this another one of your chi-ch-valric impulses?” It might have come out better if she hadn’t stammered over “chivalric.”

“Who am I to resist a damsel in distress?” There were, magically, more drinks. Mr. Desborough took a swig before turning back to Bea. “It’s all about jealousy. His, not yours. You have to make him jealous.”

Bea stumbled a little on the Louis heel of her blue silk shoes. “Didn’t you see me out there, flirting with Geordie? If that didn’t make him jealous—”

“Why should it? It’s quite obvious you’re not the least bit attracted to Geordie.”

“That’s presumptuous.”

“It’s plain to anyone with eyes. If you want to make—” He looked inquisitively at Bea.

“Marcus,” Bea provided.

“If you want to make Marcus jealous, you have to give him cause. Genuine cause,” he said with emphasis.

Something about the way he said it made the hairs on Bea’s arms prickle. Genuine cause. Not just a flirtation on a dance floor, but the real thing: someone’s lips on hers, hands in her hair, bare skin against bare skin; the thrill of sneaking off a dance floor to a secluded hallway; hurried meetings in the middle of the day; the exhilaration of eluding capture. She remembered Marcus hustling her out of a formal dinner in France, the madness of making love on a balcony, the incredible rush of it all.

How long had it been since he’d touched her? Six months, at least. No, more. At first, it was chalked up to being considerate. She’d lost his baby; she was delicate, or at least that was what the doctor said. Shock over Poppy, a mild case of influenza, miscarriage.

But Marcus had stayed away and he’d stayed away and now he was kissing Bunny and Bea was sick of being left to molder and rot as though she were someone’s maiden aunt. Why should she just stand here and wait for him to divorce her? Why should she let Marcus have all the fun?

Hands … lips … hushed laughter … Oh, she wanted it.

She raised her eyebrows at Mr. Desborough. “Sauce for the goose, you mean?” she said huskily.

Mr. Desborough gave her a long, assessing look. “It seems to me the goose is saucy enough already.”

Bea exhaled smoke. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment … or a condemnation.”

He braced a hand on the wall behind her. “Which would you like it to be?”

He was very close to her, close and warm and very, very different from Marcus, wiry where Marcus was broad, dark where Marcus was fair. Bea wondered what his hair would feel like beneath her fingers, whether it would be soft or stiff with gel, what the prickles on his jaw would feel like against her skin. Would his kiss be different from Marcus’ kiss?

Bea touched a finger to the top stud of his shirt. “Is that a proposition?”

With her heels, they were nearly the same height. His breath was warm on her cheek. “I thought you’d decided I’m a bad lot.”

“Yes,” said Bea, and her voice came out much more steadily than she would have thought. “But I’m a bad lot, too.”

She had to be, to be contemplating what she was contemplating. She had cultivated a shell of worldliness, but never like this before. Before it had been all in play, but this was real.

Bea thought fleetingly of Addie, gone home with a headache. Addie need never know. This was separate, this was different; Mr. Desborough had already severed their connection. A nice parson—she’d find Addie a nice parson, someone reliable and dependable, without this whiff of brimstone about him, this dangerously attractive whiff of brimstone.

In fact, Bea told herself, she’d be doing Addie a favor, keeping Mr. Desborough away from her. Hadn’t he himself said that he was bad for her?

“You want distraction,” she said huskily. “I want revenge. Don’t you think we might help one another?”

He picked up her hand where it rested against his chest. His thumb stroked gently against her palm. “Two lost souls, fiddling while Rome burns?” he said softly, and lifted her hand to kiss the pale blue veins at the base of her wrist.

“Something like that,” said Bea breathlessly. She wasn’t sure about Rome, but his lips burned against her wrist; she felt uncomfortable and squirmy in her own skin, restless and reckless, as though she were burning from the inside out. “If we’re going to burn anyway, why not enjoy the trip?”

Mr. Desborough’s fingers locked through hers. “A woman after my own heart.”

Bea tilted her head archly. “I thought you didn’t have one.”

“‘I would I had no heart for I fear it is a hard heart,’” he said rapidly. Poetry, again. He stepped back, looking at her with hooded green eyes. “Shall I see you home?”

Bea looked over her shoulder at Marcus. He was nose to nose with Bunny, his forehead resting familiarly against hers.

“I can see you home,” said Mr. Desborough—no, Frederick. He was watching Bea watch Marcus. “Or I can see you home. Either way, the choice is yours.”

Bea leaned against Frederick, chest to chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh.

“Not my home,” she said huskily. Addie was there. And Marcus might come back. She slid a hand across his back, feeling the warmth of his skin through his shirt. “I’d much rather see yours.”

FOURTEEN

New York, 1999

“Home, sweet home,” said Jon, flipping on the light in the front hall.

The single bulb illuminated a wilderness of cardboard boxes and framed posters still in their packing cases. A pile of unopened mail sat on one of the boxes, bills and solicitations and slippery catalogs spilling over the side. The walls were a pale cream color, contrasting with the white wainscoting, although the paint along the baseboards was beginning to flake.

“It’s nice,” said Clemmie, unwinding her scarf.

“You mean it could be nice. Hold on to that for a second.” Bending over, Jon shifted a pile of posters leaning against what turned out to be a closet door. It opened with a creak and a grunt. Inside hung a beige raincoat and a battered black overcoat.

Clemmie handed over her coat and scarf. “It’s nicer than my place.”

“That’s the benefit of renting all the way up here.” The empty hangers clanked against each other as Jon hung up Clemmie’s old cloth coat. “More bang for your buck. And we get a housing subsidy.”

“Is this Columbia housing?” The building was pre-war, mellow, and lovely, with weathered pink bricks striped in pale stone. The floors might have been scraped, but they were real, long slats of honey-colored wood laid out in a repeating pattern.

“No, but most of the building seems to be Columbia related. It’s like a dorm for professors.”

“Keggers in the lobby?”

Jon gave her a look. “I said ‘dorm,’ not ‘frat.’ Bathroom’s through there.” He pointed her to the left, towards what was clearly the bedroom. Clemmie cleverly deduced this by the presence of a mattress on the floor, sporting rumpled sheets and a blanket. “Don’t be afraid of the towels. I just washed them.”

“You’re not going to give me the tour?”

“There’s not much to tour. Bedroom to the left, study straight ahead, living room and kitchen to the right. It’s your standard rectangle.”

Belatedly Clemmie remembered that he had had a house with Caitlin, a house with a yard and two cars in the driveway and, for all she knew, 2.5 cats and a dog. She knew that at one point, a very long time ago, she’d lived in a house with both her parents and her two older brothers, but that had been so long ago that the memory had faded to something like the print in a children’s picture book, flat and unidimensional. She’d been an apartment dweller for as long as she could remember.