Private Arrangements, page 18
“No need to thank me,” she said. “I enjoyed keeping him in line.”
“He complained about you in his letters. He said you were harsh as the Gorgons and twice as deadly. That you meant to ship him to Vladivostok and leave him at the port penniless. That you threatened to bankrupt anyone who dared to loan him money when you stopped his allowance.”
There was such relish in his voice that the dangerous warmth infecting her at last turned into a conflagration of recklessness. “Did you miss me?” she heard herself ask.
Suddenly the only sound in the coach was the low roar of the train's engines and steel wheels clacking on steel tracks, going a mile a minute. She looked out the window, feeling as stupid as a stampede of lemmings.
He, too, looked out the window. For a long time he didn't speak, until she almost had herself convinced that they were both going to pretend that her question had never been uttered.
But then he did answer. “That was never the point, was it?”
They arrived at Mrs. Rowland's cottage a little after teatime. The weather had turned dour and wet in London just before they departed, but a gentle sun shone upon this part of Devon, though the soil was drenched and rain dripped off leaves still.
The roses were at their peak. Mrs. Rowland's cottage, with its bright white walls and vermilion trim, was all pastoral charm. Gigi half-expected her mother to fall down in a faint upon seeing Camden and herself together. But Camden must have had a telegram sent ahead, because though a note of curiosity wended through Mrs. Rowland's welcome, she was not taken by surprise.
“This is a lovely house,” said Camden, kissing Mrs. Rowland on the cheek. “The photograph you sent didn't quite do it justice.”
“You should see Devon in spring,” said Mrs. Rowland. “The wildflowers are incomparable in April.”
“I will come in April then,” said Camden. “I should still be in England at that time.”
Gigi felt her mother's gaze on her back as she stood looking out at the garden, strewn with petals from the earlier shower. He'd said nothing new, of course. Their deal was for one year, and that one year didn't conclude until next May. But for some reason she could not see them going on like this for another eleven months, or even another eleven weeks.
For ten years things had remained frozen in place, because he'd made it abundantly clear the circumference of the earth was not enough distance between the two of them. When he first returned, he not only personified antagonism, he took it to hitherto unscaled heights. But things had changed. This thawing of enmity put them on terra incognita, before dangerous possibilities, possibilities that she dared not even think of in the light of day, because they led to utter madness.
“I shall look forward to it,” said Mrs. Rowland. “We don't see enough of you.”
“I believe I have issued invitations beyond number for you to visit New York City, dear madam,” Camden said, a smile and a challenge in his voice. “And you've always found reasons to demur.”
“But don't you see, my dear lord Tremaine,” said Mrs. Rowland sweetly, “I could never call on a man who would not speak to my daughter.”
Gigi almost turned around in her astonishment. Somehow she'd never thought of her mother as an ally in this matter. She'd always believed, perhaps because of her substantial culpability, that Mrs. Rowland blamed her for the silent disaster that was her marriage. That her mother's letters had given Camden the wherewithal to blackmail her had further contributed to her conviction that Mrs. Rowland would enter into a sexual union with the devil himself if Camden would only bestow his blessed forgiveness on Gigi.
“Of course, I really shouldn't have corresponded with you either,” said Mrs. Rowland. “But I always fall so maddeningly short of perfection.”
This time Gigi did turn around. Was that an apology? From the woman who'd never done anything wrong in her life?
Hollis entered with the tea service, and the conversation took a sharp turn to Mrs. Rowland's latest charity gala. Camden, it turned out, was intimately acquainted with Mrs. Rowland's charitable efforts.
“Isn't that quite a bit more than what you usually raise at these events?” he asked, once Mrs. Rowland had named a sum.
“It is, I suppose.” Mrs. Rowland hesitated. “His Grace honored us with a large contribution.”
“The same duke who's coming to dinner tonight?” said Gigi.
Good Lord, was that a blush on her mother's face? To be certain, they'd had some cross words over the Duke of Perrin the last time Mrs. Rowland was in London. But the colors staining Mrs. Rowland's cheeks did not seem to have originated either in consternation or embarrassment.
“The very same.” Mrs. Rowland was once again the closest approximation of the Madonna this side of the Italian Renaissance. “An admirable figure of a man. A classical scholar. I'm quite pleased that you will be making his acquaintance.”
Camden raised his cup. “I, for one, am looking forward to dinner with trembling anticipation.”
Camden left within minutes for the scenic ride down to Torquay that Mrs. Rowland had apparently promised him. Gigi had felt uncomfortable with him in the room, with her mother's sharp eyes assessing their every interaction, as if all their recent dealings could be deduced from a “Would you please pass the creamer?” But without his presence as a buffer, the awkwardness between the two women immediately came to the fore, as strong and unmistakable as the scent of vinegar.
“I visited Papa's grave last Friday,” said Mrs. Rowland, after nearly three minutes of unrelieved silence.
Gigi was surprised. They didn't speak of John Rowland very often. Grief was a private matter. “I saw your flowers when I went on Sunday.” John Rowland would have turned sixty-eight on Sunday had he survived the typhoid fever that took him at age forty-nine. “He always did like camellias.”
“Because you gave him a handful from the garden when you were three. He adored you,” said Mrs. Rowland.
“He adored you too.”
Her father had taken her along whenever he shopped for a present for his wife. Nothing was ever too good for his beautiful missus. He loved big, showy things—perhaps the reason behind her own flamboyant taste in jewelry, though she rarely wore any—but in the end he bought only cameos and modest pearls, because he didn't want his wife to have to wear anything she'd consider garish.
“We were married ten years and five months when he passed away.” Mrs. Rowland took a small cream cake, set it before her, and cut it into perfect quarters. “You'll be married ten years and five months in a fortnight. Life is uncertain, Gigi. Don't throw away your second chance with Tremaine.”
“I would rather we not speak of him.”
“I would rather we do,” said Mrs. Rowland firmly. “If you believe that I have schemed only because Tremaine is in line for a dukedom, then you are greatly mistaken. Do you think I never came upon the two of you together in the sitting parlor at Briarmeadow, holding hands and whispering? I'd never seen you so alive and happy, before or after. And I'd never seen him that way, completely without his reserve, for once acting his age, when he'd always carried the burden of the world on his shoulders.”
“That was a long time ago, Mother.”
“Not long enough for me to have forgotten. Or you. Or him.”
Gigi took a deep breath and finished her tea. It was already cold, and too sweet—because Camden's un-gloved hand had brushed hers when he passed the sucretière, and she didn't know two from four in the minute afterward. “What good does it do any of us to remember? I loved him then, I would not deny it. And perhaps he loved me too. But that is all in the past. He no longer loves me and I no longer love him. And if there are second chances going around, no one has offered me any, least of all Camden.”
“Don't you see?” cried Mrs. Rowland, exasperated, setting down her teacup with an uncharacteristic thud. A glob of milky brown liquid sloshed over the rim of the cup and spread into an astonishingly perfect circular stain on the embroidered tablecloth that Gigi had purchased during her ill-fated visit to Copenhagen. “That he is here in England, living in your house, being civil to you, persuading you to come with him to see me—all this, does it not mean anything to you? Does it have to be stated in so many words or carved on a stone tablet, for heaven's sake?”
Was it not enough that she had to struggle with it by herself? She did not need to hear it spelled out item by item by her mother, as if she were a dimwit chit from some Oscar Wilde play.
“Mother, you forget why he is here in the first place,” she said coolly. “We are divorcing. I have pledged my hand to Lord Frederick.”
Mrs. Rowland rose abruptly. “I will rest for a short while. It would not do for me to appear haggard before His Grace. But if you think that you love Lord Frederick a fraction as much as you love—not loved, but love—Tremaine, then you are a greater fool than any Shakespeare ever wrote.”
Gigi remained in the parlor long after Mrs. Rowland had swept out, trailing a faint wake of rose attar behind her. Slowly, absently, she finished the cream cake Mrs. Rowland had left behind, as well as the two small jam tarts that still remained on the three-tiered platter.
If only she could be certain that her mother was dead wrong.
Chapter Twenty-two
The duke, upon first glance, did not appear either a scholar or a reprobate—no book dust or buxom doxies clung to him. But he was certainly imposing as an aristocrat of the highest rank, with none of the golly-would-you-believe-my-good-luck mellowness that characterized the current Duke of Fairford, her father-in-law. No, this was a man born to lord over lesser beings and who'd done it authoritatively for the entirety of his adult life. A man who could cow half of society into hushed awe with his sheer ducalness.
Gigi was not immediately impressed. Despite an upbringing focused exclusively on becoming a duchess, she seemed to have inherited a democratic streak from her plebeian ancestors. “Good evening, Your Grace.”
“Lady Tremaine, you have decided to join us after all.” His corresponding wry amusement made it evident that he was not without a clue as to the purpose behind the dinner.
The surprise was her mother, who did not have a democratic bone in her body. Gigi would have expected some reverence on her part—and triumph that she'd finally maneuvered Gigi and the duke into the same room—but Mrs. Rowland's demeanor was rather one of grim determination, as if she were on a mission to Greenland, a grueling journey with nothing but barrenness at the end.
Equally intriguing was the duke's deportment toward Mrs. Rowland. A man such as he did not know how to be nice. He probably tolerated his friends and treated everyone else with condescension. Yet as he complimented Mrs. Rowland on her flower arrangements, he displayed a solicitude and a delicacy Gigi hadn't sensed in him before.
Camden arrived late, his hair still slightly damp from his bath. He'd returned from the seashore only thirty minutes ago.
“May I present my son-in-law, Lord Tremaine,” said Mrs. Rowland, in a rare bit of archness. “Lord Tremaine, His Grace the Duke of Perrin.”
“A pleasure, Your Grace,” said Camden. Despite his hurried toilette, he seemed more settled into the role of affable, oblivious host than anyone else. “I've had the pleasure of reading Eleven Years Before Ilium, a most illuminating work.”
The duke raised one black brow. “I had no idea my modest monographs could be found in America.”
“As to that, I wouldn't know either. I received a copy from my esteemed mother-in-law, when she was in London last.”
The duke turned his monocled gaze to Mrs. Rowland. He'd have resembled a Punch caricature if it weren't for his commanding presence and his sardonic self-awareness.
Mrs. Rowland shifted her weight from one foot to the other, then back again. Gigi's eyes widened. The men in the parlor might not understand the significance of that seemingly unremarkable motion. But Gigi knew that Mrs. Rowland never fidgeted. She could hold as still as a caryatid, and for about as long.
“My mother is a learned acolyte of the Blind Bard,” said Gigi. “You will find few women, or men for that matter, sir, more thoroughly knowledgeable concerning all things Homeric.”
This revelation startled the duke again, in a way that felt more complicated than simply a man's surprise that a woman would know something in his field of expertise. He inclined his head in Mrs. Rowland's direction. “My compliments, madam. You must tell me how you came to develop a passion for my arcane subjects.”
Mrs. Rowland's response was a high castle wall of a smile. Camden glanced Gigi's way. Apparently she wasn't the only one to have noticed something highly irregular.
Hollis announced that dinner awaited. Mrs. Rowland, with almost obvious relief, suggested that they pair off and proceed to the dining room.
For Victoria, about the only silver lining to the cumbersome evening was that the duke didn't immediately succumb to Gigi's charms.
She'd fretted about Gigi's looks throughout her daughter's girlhood, as the child stubbornly refused to blossom into the kind of flawless beauty Victoria had been but instead grew unfashionably tall, with wide shoulders and a challenging gaze that was Victoria's despair. Then, a few years ago, after Victoria at last realized she no longer needed to train her eyes on the girl's gown and coiffure for signs of imperfection, she noticed something quite confounding.
Men stared at Gigi. Some of them gawked. At balls and soirées, they had their eyes glued to her as she walked, talked, and occasionally—largely with indifference—glanced their way. When Victoria mentally distanced herself and studied her daughter as a stranger would, she was shocked to realize just how obscenely attractive Gigi might be to the masculine sex.
She had no words to describe the kind of primal allure Gigi exuded, an incandescent sensuality that surely didn't come from Victoria. It made Victoria feel old, past her prime, her vaunted beauty a distant second place to Gigi's youth, luminosity, and glamour.
Gigi looked as well as she ever did in a dinner gown of vermilion velvet, the skin of her throat and arms glowing in the lambent light like that of a Bouguereau nymph. The duke spoke to Gigi as he ought to, making the obligatory grunts concerning the relative proportion of precipitation to sunshine in recent days in both London and Devon. But unlike Gigi's husband, who glanced at her over his wineglass with every other forkful, Perrin kept most of his attention on the plate before him, gravely tasting the successive courses of soupe d'oseille, filet de sole à la Normandie, and duck à la Rouennaise.
“Allow me to compliment you, madam, on your chef,” the duke suddenly looked up and said. “The food is nowhere near as terrible as I expected.”
Victoria was absurdly pleased. Ever since the night when they'd gambled over chocolates and she'd practically told him to drag her upstairs and ravish her lonely old bones, she'd been on pins and needles.
She could repeat to herself only so many times that, in desperate embarrassment at being found out, she'd made up the whole thing on the spot. The only problem was that she was a terrible impromptu liar. Without hours and days of prior preparation, she either blurted out the truth or bungled so badly the odor of her mendacity could be scented a furlong away.
Had she told the inadvertent truth instead? Was this whole exercise in folly simply an opening for her to grab the duke by his lapels and make him take notice of her at long last? He hadn't entirely believed her, but he didn't disbelieve her enough. There was something about truth, the visceral ferocity of it, that seeped under and around incredulity, no mattter how well-founded and watertight.
“Thank you,” she said, “though I cannot return the compliment on your tact.”
“Tact is for others, madam.” As if to underscore his point, he glanced at Gigi and Camden and said, “Forgive the curiosity of a dotard who retired from Society many years ago, but is it commonplace nowadays for a couple about to divorce to be on such apparently friendly terms?”
“Quite so,” answered Camden, his tone as smooth and creamy as a dish of flan. He looked at Gigi. “Wouldn't you say, my dear?”
“Without a doubt,” said Gigi dryly. “We do loathe scenes, don't we, Tremaine?”
Even the duke was left momentarily speechless by this bravura performance. He moved on to a safer topic. “I understand you've quite the Midas touch, Lord Tremaine.”
“Hardly, sir. It's Lady Tremaine who has the head for business. I but try my best to reach financial parity with her.”
Victoria glanced at Gigi, hoping she'd heard the admiration in Camden's words. But the quick shadow of confusion in Gigi's eyes suggested that she heard something else instead.
“I'd always thought it otherwise,” said Victoria. “Lady Tremaine builds upon the success of her forefathers. But you started with nothing.”
“I wouldn't say so, madam. I'm no Horatio Alger, hero beloved of the American imagination,” replied Camden. “My first acquisitions were made with substantial loans obtained against Lady Tremaine's inheritance.”
Gigi choked on her wine. She coughed into her napkin as Hollis rushed to her side with a fresh napkin and a goblet of water. She took a long draft of water and promptly resumed her ingestion of the slices of duck on her plate.
Victoria took it upon herself to ask the question that Gigi didn't. “I had no idea. How were you able to do that?”
Camden, like his cousin before him, had signed a marriage contract that prohibited any direct access to Gigi's fortune. “I proved to them who I was and who she was. I had the marriage papers and the announcement from the Times. The Bank of New York decided quite on its own that my wife would come to my rescue should I be in danger of defaulting,” he said, his smile subtly feral.
Good grief. Dazzled by his polish and finesse, Victoria had never observed this brazen side to her son-in-law. She'd always thought the once-upon-a-time affection and friendship between the calculating heiress and the urbane marquess endearing but odd, as the two could not be more different one from the other. How she'd underestimated Camden by equating his burnish of faultless manners with a lack of inner ferocity.
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