The Gilded Cage (13 page)

“It's all right, Mr. Birch,” Columbine said. “We've had some bad news, that's all. A young woman who we tried to help is dead.” She looked over at Bell, who was now standing at the window, her back to the room. “We just found out.”

From his vantage point, with Columbine turned away, Elijah could clearly see Lawrence's face. Not a flicker of emotion showed. He watched thoughtfully as Lawrence composed his face into worry and heartache as Columbine turned back.

“Columbine—Mrs. Nash—I'm so sorry. You must be dreadfully upset. Here,” he said, pushing the armchair toward her, “please sit down. You must tell me everything.”

Elijah watched what he was now sure was a performance on the man's part, as he held onto Columbine's hand and looked into her face. He waited curiously for Columbine's reaction, and saw that she was a bit flustered by the attention, a bit confused.

Bell wheeled away from the window, and, keeping her face averted said, “I'll be going.” Lawrence barely gave her a glance.

“Mr. Birch, have you met Mr. Reed?” Columbine asked, remembering her manners. The two men nodded coolly at each other, for each had taken the other's measure. “Mr. Reed is staying for tea,” she added.

“Are you sure you're up for company?” Lawrence murmured solicitously to Columbine. Of course, he was excusing himself from that description.

Elijah noted Lawrence Birch's adhesion to the carpet. He'd be damned if he'd stand here and compete with this gigilo for the privilege of being alone with Columbine. “Yes, Mrs. Nash,” he said aloud, “I think we should postpone our meeting.”

Disappointment clouded her face, but she was looking down, and Elijah did not see it. “Of course, Mr. Reed.”

As soon as the door closed behind Elijah, Lawrence looked down at Columbine tenderly. “You look done in,” he said.

“I was too late to save someone,” she said. “That is never easy.” She looked at him keenly. “That reminds me. Lawrence, will you do me a favor?”

“Do you need to ask? Anything you wish.”

“I wonder if you'd be go-between with the Devlins and myself.”

He started. “For what purpose?”

Columbine rose and went to the windowsill and leaned against it. “Because of that article, Ambrose Hartley has decided to withhold the settlement to the Devlins, to punish them for talking to Mr. Reed. He thinks—Mr. Reed does—that the Devlins could have a case against Mr. Hartley, if they chose to bring it to court. And I am privy to information that Mr. Hartley absolutely knew the fireworks were unsafe. I want you to tell them that, and tell them that I would be willing to testify in a court of law as to those facts. That's all. I'm afraid Fiona Devlin would slam the door in my face before I had a chance to tell her. But she would listen to you. You're not a tainted woman.”

“I'd be glad to help you, Columbine. Of course. I'll go tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Lawrence.” Columbine discovered that they'd slipped into using Christian names. She hadn't been aware of when it happened. “It's very kind of you. And I hope it will help the Devlins. I have a feeling that even the threat of a lawsuit will open up Ambrose Hartley's pockets.” Her face changed suddenly, and she looked down. “Perhaps I can do some good for the Devlins, at least. I failed so badly with poor Sally Hoover.”

Lawrence crossed to the window, and suddenly his hand was on the back of her neck. “I'm sure you did not,” he murmured.

With her head bowed, Columbine felt drugged by the lazy rhythm of Lawrence's strong fingers against her neck. The touch against the fine hairs of her nape was so soothing. Columbine stopped thinking about the Devlins and Sally Hoover. She looked up into Lawrence's clear blue eyes. She followed the flare of his full upper lip, and she took a breath as subtly as she could. She was suddenly face to face with her attraction, and she didn't like it. It was damnably inconvenient to feel such a pull, she thought. A younger man. And such a radical, such a mystery. There was something there that repelled her even as it attracted her.

He seemed to read encouragement in her eyes. His lips quirked, and he bent his head. The shock of the contact sent her head tilting back against the dusty glass. She kissed him back, felt his lips and tongue move, warm and sweet, against her own lips, inside her own mouth. His hand cupped the back of her head, and she felt suddenly small and girlish next to him. And Columbine never felt small and girlish. She rather liked it, just at that moment.

She was so intent on Lawrence's kiss and these perplexing new feelings that she quite forgot where she was. Unfortunate, since Elijah Reed had paused to light a cigar on the sidewalk outside and think about what he had witnessed, and if he cared. He happened to look up. And what he saw made him stand still and stare, and his cigar went out without him noticing. A blond mass of hair pressed against a window while a tall man bent over a white face. And then, slender arms reached up to encircle the tall man's neck. Elijah felt a strange pain pierce him. Frowning, he headed down Fourteenth Street back toward the solace of his tiny house.

Columbine's unfortunate luck doubled when Bell, at the same moment Elijah turned away, was passing in the hall. She heard the silence and looked in, thinking Columbine alone. She saw the kiss, the complete concentration of the two people in the room, and her heart, too, was pierced. She, too, hurried away.

And, invariably, since the world falls away under such circumstances, Columbine and Lawrence just went on kissing.

It hadn't been easy to get Horatio to the Twenty-third Street house. But Marguerite insisted. She had plans. All her work—and her pleasure—would be for nothing if she couldn't manage to get Bell out of his heart. He had stalled and stalled, he had promised and promised. It was time for a push.

She was waiting behind the parlor curtain, watching the street, when she saw him walk up. She opened the door before he could knock. “Don't look so nervous,” she told him, taking his hand and drawing him inside. “Bell never comes home before five at the earliest. Usually even later. It's only three. We have two hours.”

“I don't understand, Marguerite,” Horatio said. “Two hours for what? I'm—”

She stopped him by placing her mouth on his. He didn't resist, but his kiss was abstracted, dry. Marguerite persisted, and finally Horatio began to get interested. Just as he deepened the kiss, she withdrew. “I have a surprise for you,” she murmured. Taking his hand, she led him to the stairs.

Horatio stopped as abruptly as a horse refusing to take a jump. “Upstairs?”

Taking his hand, this time she placed it on her breast. She kissed him again. “Yes.”

Horatio took the first step, then the next. Marguerite's red lips and mocking glance drew him upward. He could feel himself beginning to get excited. She was wearing a loose duster over her underclothes, and he caught a glimpse of black stockings and slender ankles as she lifted her skirts and ran faster, then disappeared around the landing. Horatio followed her, smiling indulgently at her childishness. Now she was hiding, and he would have to find her.

He'd never been upstairs, and he stopped, confused at the closed doors. He tried the first on the left, a corner room. It opened to a large bedroom, a deep gold satin bedspread, a ruby dressing gown thrown across it, a shawl in ivory cashmere with gold fringe. Pins were scattered on a small dressing table, and piles of books sat on a small desk near the corner. He didn't need to see Columbine's spectacles to realize who the room belonged to. Femininity, luxury, intelligence, purpose: Columbine. He closed the door.

“This way, Horatio.” The voice was light, mocking.

Now he noticed that one of the doors down the hall was slightly ajar. Horatio approached it slowly; for some strange reason, he had a sudden uneasy feeling about this game. He pushed open the door with a wary finger.

At first, he could only see Marguerite. She was standing in the middle of the room. She'd thrown off the duster and was wearing a plain wool wrapper in a particularly dull shade of maroon. The robe was open, and underneath she was wearing a winter chemise, white with a slight edging of lace. Flannel drawers. Black cotton stockings with a hole in the left one, around the calf.

He blinked as the information slowly sank in that something was wrong. Marguerite's usual underthings were not practical. They were trimmed with flounces of lace, pale delicate ribbons. Sometimes he suspected she pinched things from Columbine. These were serviceable, warm, practical. He could not imagine Marguerite buying a wool wrapper in that dull color. He had never seen Marguerite stand before him in drawers made of such serviceable flannel.

Slowly, he looked around him. The room was spare. There was nothing extraneous, and there was nothing out of place. A painted iron bed was neatly made with a white coverlet. A gray blanket was folded on a chair. A rag rug sat on a swept, polished wood floor. A desk sat in the sunniest corner, books carefully arranged on a small shelf above. Political pamphlets were stacked on the desk, their edges neatly aligned. The windowseat held no cushions, no invitation to dream.

“Yes, it's Bell's room, Horatio,” Marguerite said in her husky voice, so adult, so seductively surprising, coming from that small body, that young, fresh face. “I'm wearing Bell's clothes. Her underthings. The robe she wears before she goes to bed. That's her bed, Horatio.”

He took a step backward. “This is ridiculous, Marguerite. Come on. Put your own clothes back on. I refuse to—”

“I want her out of your heart, Horatio,” Marguerite continued, as if he hadn't spoken. “Look at her bed. It's the bed of a nun. I want you to feel me underneath you on that bed, Horatio. I want you to feel the difference between us.”

Marguerite came toward him. As she stood before him, unbearably close but not touching him, he caught it, unbelievable as it was: Bell's scent. It seemed to rise from the dressing gown, from the underclothes, and it sent a flare of excitement through him that made him shudder.

She saw it; she saw his shuddering intake of breath. He took an involuntary step closer and breathed the scent in again. It wasn't perfume, it wasn't flowery, it was clean and fresh, direct. It was Bell.

He seemed to watch his own hand as if it belonged to a stranger. It reached out and fingered the tiny ribbon on the chemise.

“I used her soap,” Marguerite said.

He crashed up against a wall of longing. For Bell, for Marguerite? It didn't matter. He pulled her to him and buried his face in her fragrant hair, slid his hands down her slender, boyish body. She was Marguerite, but with his eyes closed, she was also Bell. And did it bother Marguerite? It didn't seem so. She was taunting him, but it wasn't with anger, or pique. He didn't know what it was that would provoke her to take another woman's things, to wash in her soap. He didn't care.

Marguerite wrenched away from him and crossed to the bed. She lay on it, her legs slightly open and waving back and forth. She slipped out of the robe and then, slowly, out of the drawers. Her dark blue eyes burned in her white face.

“Her bed,” she said. She threw the drawers at him. They hit his face and fell to the floor.

He drew closer. He was passive as she undressed him, kneeling on the bed and clucking approvingly at his erection.

“Good boy,” she said, laying back again. She kept on the chemise, but she unbuttoned it as far as she could and pushed it off her shoulders.

Naked, he eased himself beside her. He lay opposite her, almost afraid to touch her. What manner of a creature was she, to do this? Horatio felt confused and very excited. Prolonging the agony, he breathed in that scent again, that essence that eluded him—Bell, or Marguerite? One tiny breast peeked at him, and he reached out, finally, to fondle it.

“Did you want to do that to Bell, Horatio?” Marguerite asked. She arched her back, pushing her tiny breasts toward him. “Would she do this? Would she want you like this, Horatio? Would she,” and Marguerite reached out to stroke him, felt him leap in her small fingers, “touch you like this? Would she give you such pleasure?” She rubbed him, watching him steadily all the while with that strange blue gaze.

Horatio didn't answer. He was past thinking now, and not capable of a response. He fumbled with the tiny buttons on the chemise. Marguerite reached down and ripped it open, the buttons flying out to nestle in the bedclothes. “Would she want you that much, Horatio?” she whispered, as his lips burned a trail down her fragrant skin.

“She lies here every night,” she went on. Horatio reached between her legs and parted them. “And she does not think of you, Horatio.”

He rolled on top of her, pinning her slender arms. His face was strained, and sweat dampened the ends of his hair.

“Close your eyes,” she ordered, and he did. He felt her skin, hot against his fingers, and he thought of Bell, that exquisite lushness sheathing such dead passivity. She had remained unmoved, all throughout their courtship. There were nights, he remembered, that he'd wanted to lash out, wanted to hurt her. Anything to crack that bland facade. He squeezed Marguerite's breast, remembering. She cried a soft cry, then caught his ear with her sharp teeth.