Love and Scandal, page 20
“Herbert!” Henrietta gasped, one hand over her mouth. “She is my friend since girlhood. Surely there is some mistake?”
“No, my dear, for the papers have named her Jameson’s mistress, and what motive would such fine men as I know to be at the helm of Wilson’s Gazette have for lying?”
“They don’t have to be lying,” Collette said. With a great effort she kept her voice level and her tone neutral. She wanted to rage at the assumptions and presumptuous behavior of Mr. Herbert Dancey, but for Henrietta’s sake she would remain calm. “But they are mistaken in their inferences from things that have a very innocent explanation, and I think it is highly unfair—”
“Out of my house, Miss Jardiniere,” he said, pointing to the door, the very image of scornful rectitude in the face of depravity. “I will not have the very air polluted by your immorality. You may think me harsh, but I have a wife and children to consider.”
Collette was stunned by the pomposity, the arrogance, the base assumptions he felt free to make. But her intended negation of his accusation caught in her throat. Maybe lying—even to a man like Herbert Dancey—was more difficult than she had anticipated. She was Jameson’s mistress in every way but one: she had not allowed him to pay for anything. She turned to her friend and put out her hand. “Henny, things appear bad, but I will set the record straight.”
“I know, dearest,” the plump woman said with a watery smile. “I—”
“Henny, I have spoken!” The portly, balding man gazed steadily at his wife.
Collette looked from husband to wife and back again. Dancey was staring into his wife’s eyes. When Collette glanced back to Henny, she was horrified to see a transformation taking place. Her friend sighed, her shoulders sagged and she dropped her gaze to the carpet.
“Yes, Herbert, I do understand.”
“This is for the protection of you and our children.”
“I understand, dearest.”
Astounded and shocked at the transformation of her friend into cowed submission, Collette said, “Henny! I…”
Herbert swiveled his pale gaze to Collette. “I have asked you to leave, and I would appreciate your immediate acquiescence.”
There was nothing to do but obey. With one last look at Henny, who was openly sobbing into a handkerchief, Collette swirled from the room, snatching her parasol and gloves from the butler as she exited.
Sixteen
“How could she abandon me like that, Loxy? How could she?” Collette, weary and hurt by Henny’s failure to stand up to her husband for her friend, had poured out the whole story to Philoxia as she sat back on one of her elegant recamiér couches. Henny’s weak-willed acquiescence to her husband’s dictatorial arrogance had been thoroughly canvassed in a long diatribe.
But Philoxia did not immediately jump in to commiserate, and Collette opened her eyes and sat up straight. She stared at her friend in disbelief. “You don’t mean to say you agree with her? Oh, Loxy, I felt sure you would not!”
Philoxia Bertrand shook her elegantly coifed head and toyed with a bangle bracelet on her slim wrist. “My dear, you know I don’t, but you have never been a wife. Do not presume to judge her.”
“Judge her? They are judging me!” Collette jumped from her seat, skirts flaring out around her as she paced around Philoxia’s parlor. “Herbert Dancey is an overstuffed, ignorant, bellicose, judgmental dastard, and Henny went along with what he said. ‘Yes, dearest’, ‘Of course, dearest’ as if she had no more mind of her own than a…a…a peahen!”
Steel in her voice, Philoxia said, “Nevertheless, Colly, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn her. I say again, you do not know what it is like to be a wife.”
“What does that have to do with anything? I thought you, of all people, would be on my side.”
The woman sighed. “Colly, stop being such a child. Your ‘side’? We are not choosing teams for cricket.” She leaned over the tea table and poured from a patterned china teapot into two matching cups, handing one to Collette, who waved it away. She shrugged, set it on the table and took a sip of her own. “I am simply saying Henny is a married woman with five children, and possibly one more on the way. You have no idea what pressures Herbert can bring to bear on her, nor what she has to live with.”
“But he seems a positively indulgent husband. I had thought him sincerely attached to her. You do not mean…” Horrified, Collette sank back down onto the sofa and stared at Philoxia. “He does not beat her, does he? I knew a vicar who beat his wife every Sunday after service, ‘whether she deserved it or not’, as he said to his curate. The villain! I cannot—”
Impatiently, Philoxia waved her hands. “No, no, no! You must stop being so dramatic, Colly dear! You will never become a writer if you insist on seeing the world in such black and white terms. Herbert does not beat her, but he…he has a very narrow view of the world, my dear. He is a banker, after all, and in his world appearances are everything. I suspect that is why she has not attended any of my parties before. He does not trust the artistic world. Allowing her to escort you to my literary soirée was an aberration, and one he likely bitterly regrets and is compensating for now.”
“What does the narrowness of his view have to do with her?”
“Honestly, Collette, how have you lived this long?” Philoxia rolled her eyes, managing to make even that gesture look elegant. She set her cup down on the mahogany table, which was clothed in two layers of pretty chintz. “A husband will always carry the day in any difference of opinion between a man and wife,” she continued, her tone lecturing. “Henny is wise. Herbert could make things very difficult for her if she did not know when to acquiesce gracefully.”
“Difficult for her?”
Philoxia’s steady gaze settled on Collette “You must know that a husband carries all of the power in a marriage. The children are his, regardless of the fact that she bore them! And what do you think is more important to Henny, you or her children?”
Appalled, Collette said, “Do you mean he would separate her from her children?”
“I don’t know and she probably does not either. But even apart from that, she must live with him and be guided by him, and raise her children with him for the rest of her life. Surely you can understand her wish to keep her husband happy?”
“At the price of abandoning me? I’m sorry Philoxia, I cannot agree. I would have found some other way.”
“Would you have? Perhaps.” Philoxia fixed a steady gaze on her friend. “But, Colly, is there no area in your life where you have done less than you would wish? Nowhere you have been less than frank, less than honest, less than courageous, simply to make life a little easier for yourself? Have you never taken the easy way out of something, even if you suspected you would regret it one day?”
Guiltily, Collette thought of her writing career. The easy way. She had allowed her aunt to persuade her against her own inclination to publish under a man’s name, a pseudonym, simply because it would make life a little more complicated for her to publish under her own name. Her true motive, she now recognized, was fear. Was Henny afraid? Afraid of losing her husband, her family? If Collette had taken the easy way out, how could she fault Henny for doing the same?
Philoxia nodded. She seemed to have read Collette’s expression and interpreted it correctly. “I thought so. There isn’t a woman, or a man for that matter, who hasn’t compromised at some point. We make choices and then live with the consequences.”
Watching her friend’s handsome face, the shadow of long-suppressed pain that haunted her etched in lines bracketing her mouth, Collette remembered the whispering and rumors when Loxy disappeared in the middle of the night that long-ago winter. They had known, she and Henny, about the romance with the music teacher, though Loxy had not revealed her plans to elope with him. But when she disappeared, they knew. They knew and they didn’t tell anyone.
Maybe they should have. Maybe they could have saved Philoxia from her shame, the shame of an illegitimate child, a child that was never born alive, and from the stigma she had to live down. They had been silent because of the “romance” of it all. Still, it was Philoxia’s choice. She was speaking from experience when she spoke of making choices and living with the consequences. How many compromises had she made along the way to rescue her reputation and find the peace she now seemed to own?
Judging Henny was easy, Collette admitted to herself, but turning the magnifying glass on her own behavior was not. She had compromised when she made the choice to publish her novel under a man’s name. She agreed in part because she did not want to alarm or embarrass her aunt, but to be ruthlessly truthful, she had also done it to insulate herself from the reaction of the public. If it had been a disaster, she would have been able to disown it to some extent, divorce herself from public censure.
If she had been firm with herself and her aunt, and published under her own name, then she would not be in this mess now. Not this particular mess, anyhow. No doubt Henny would still be barred from seeing her—Herbert would certainly think Last Days scandalous and she as a woman writer immoral—but at least it would be for something she was proud of, not her own weakness as a woman, her capitulation to Charles Jameson.
Philoxia, silent all this time, gently said, “You see? It is not so easy when one really considers, is it?”
“No,” Collette said slowly, sitting up straight on the couch and taking her tea finally.
“And to be fair to Herbert, how long do you think his job at the bank would last if it was known that he allowed his wife to consort with someone of questionable morals? They are a very rigid bunch.”
Collette watched her friend shudder, and for the first time wondered how she had managed to regain her position in society after running away with the music master and then miscarrying his illegitimate child. Hesitantly, she asked that very question, though in a much more roundabout way.
Backbone straight, head up, proudly Philoxia answered, “I reintroduced myself to society as if the past had never happened. I was more moral than even the old cats who would have judged me severely and I held my virtue up for all the world to see. It was a struggle, because for a time I lived in fear of the old stain on my reputation coming back to haunt me. But then I met Albert Bertrand and he wanted to marry me. I told him the truth, told him everything, and it did not make a bit of difference to him. He was a good, good man.”
“And so you don’t worry anymore? About being found out, I mean.”
“At this point I don’t believe anyone would think it the same woman.” She smiled. “They all think me lily-white, you see. Holier than even the holiest ladies.” She laughed, a light energetic tinkle of sound. “And I have the satisfaction of having fooled them all. If they but knew the truth…”
“You’re right and I am wrong,” Collette admitted. “I’m sorry I was so harsh about Henny. I’ve been a fool in so many ways, Loxy.” She gazed down at the elegant patterned rug and sighed. But she would not give in to melancholy! She stiffened her backbone and looked up. “Let’s talk of other things, future plans. Say you will come down to Kent next summer and spend a month or two.”
She successfully turned the conversation to lighter topics. Collette, not wanting to return to her hotel for her own reason, accepted her friend’s invitation and stayed through dinner and early evening, and then allowed Loxy’s carriage to take her back to the coffeehouse. Alone in her room, finally, Collette pondered the thorny question of morality as she lay on her bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling by the light of one guttering candle. She had avidly read all of the criticism of her novel, laudatory and condemnatory, and the damning of Last Days as immoral had puzzled her. She had created in Lankin a man used to doing exactly what he wanted in life without apology. He was a rake, a seducer, a gambler and deep drinker. But she had not presented graphic views of his rakish life. How could she when she, in truth, knew so little?
In the course of the novel, though, he learned every action had a consequence. Morality, she had postulated through the novel, was not some arbitrary list of rules, but how your actions affected those around you. When Lankin began to recognize what his unthinking actions had done to people, he repented sincerely and went to great lengths to make amends. Surely his repentance was just what men like Herbert Dancey would have wanted?
But she supposed the controversy had been because she could not simply leave it there. In her heart she didn’t think morality was so simple, nor was repentance. It would have been a stiflingly preachy little fable, she thought, if she had not suggested Lankin could have been moral and still followed his true nature. Immorality was not lovemaking outside of marriage, drinking wine or gambling. Immorality was in the harm one did to innocent others along the way. He had thoughtlessly seduced innocent girls who didn’t understand the consequences of their actions, and he had even used lies to induce them to part with their virginity, sacrificing it to his lust.
Jameson had done none of those things. She had been, he told her, his first virgin, and she had offered herself to him wholeheartedly in the name of curiosity, though she now recognized beneath that inquisitiveness was an attraction and desire for him that she was not, then, willing to admit to herself on anything but a superficial level. She turned over on her lumpy bed and thumped her pillow, agitated by the very thought of him. Had he come to the hotel looking for her? She hadn’t asked that of the landlord when she returned late in the evening, not wanting to draw attention to herself. What had he thought when he awoke to find her gone? Had he missed her as much as she missed him?
She groaned aloud and turned over on her back. She had to stop thinking about him. Since she had come to London she had thought, it seemed, of little else. Kent called to her, for she longed for peace of mind. If she could she would have, in that moment, returned to her former blissful state of ignorance, before she truly knew how a man could consume a woman’s thoughts.
No, that was not true. For all of the pain of the journey, she was wiser, and one should never regret wisdom. Her fears, she supposed, were twofold. She worried that she would never be able to get him out of her heart and she worried that her ability to write was gone forever. Her former ability seemed to have fled, and even the voice inside of her was silent.
She closed her eyes but the tears slid from under her sealed lids. Tomorrow she had some decisions to make, even though she felt ill-prepared to make them. Jameson had promised to handle Wilson’s Gazette, but now that she had run away from him, he might not feel obligated to do so. What he would do for a mistress might be far more than he would feel compelled to do for a lover who had walked away from him.
Jameson stared out of the window of his office, brooding about the disappointment of the previous day. Awaking to find Collette gone had only been the beginning. After a full day of trying to track her down, he could no longer tell himself she was just embarrassed, or wanted to avoid being seen by his staff. She had escaped him deliberately and had purposely stayed away from her hotel all day with the intention of avoiding him.
But he still wanted to know why. He was terribly afraid he had hurt or offended her with his suggestion that she move into the cottage. She had likely misunderstood, though he had to admit, any woman in her position would have thought the same. He had been physically drained, though the euphoria that had coursed through him lingered far longer than was usual for him after a sexual experience. Without thinking how it sounded, he had suggested—no, decreed—that she move into the cottage. Clumsy! He knew women better than that. She was not an experienced courtesan, to be so commanded. Nor did he want her ever to think he thought of her that way.
Once his business with Dick Murphy was over, he would find her and apologize for his dunderheaded proposition. First, he’d again go to the Chapter Coffeehouse, and if she was still not there, then Philoxia Bertrand’s Mayfair home, and if not there, then her publisher. He’d find her, no matter how long it took.
His secretary ushered Dick Murphy into the room, and the young man sidled to the desk and took the offered chair. Now, Jameson thought, looking his temporary employee over, how to explain this mission?
“Dick, I have a new assignment for you,” Jameson said, fiddling with a pen at his desk. “I am having a little trouble with a reporter by the name of Randall Proctor. He is dogging my trail and making my life miserable and I want to find out more about him—where he’s from, how he works, where he lives, who he sees. Anything and everything.” He had decided that the bold approach he had suggested to Collette, of threatening Wilson’s Gazette, would likely only make things worse if it got out. He did not want to drag Collette’s name through the muck. Better to be circumspect, to find the reporter and offer him a bribe to recant his allegations. Or if that wouldn’t work, find some other way to make Proctor comply with his wishes. The fellow must have a weakness. What would it be? Cards? Women? Liquor? Was he in debt? Did he have an aging granny to support?
The young man, seated on a hard chair on the opposite side of the desk, nodded. “I can do that, sir.”
“Do it, then, to the exclusion of all else.” He wrote down Proctor’s name, where he worked and a description as best he could remember, folded the paper and handed it across the desk to Dick Murphy. “There will be a handsome reward in this for you when I am done.”
The young man tucked the paper in an inside pocket of his tweed jacket. “But sir, what do I do about the other?”
“Other?”
