Private Arrangements, page 21
“You have rebuilt the terrace,” said Mrs. Rowland, almost as soon as they entered the south drawing room. One side of the room overlooked the terraced slope at the rear of the house, leading down to the spread of formal, geometric gardens and the small lake beyond. “Her Grace used to fret about it.”
“Did she?” Yet something else he didn't know about his own mother.
“Yes, rather. But she chose not to repair it so as not to disturb your father in his illness,” Mrs. Rowland said. “She was a very good woman.”
That, he'd realized only too late. In his proud adolescent years, he'd secretly thought his mother too frumpy and countrified, possessing none of the regality and glamour befitting the consort of a prince of the realm. Her anxious love he'd borne as if it were a millstone about his neck, little suspecting that he'd be adrift without it.
“She never said anything to me about it. And I fear I was too obtuse and self-occupied to guess it of her. I had it repaired only when I began giving weekend parties here.”
“It is very pretty,” she said, gazing out the window at the exuberant apricot-gold roses blooming along the balustrade. There were roses on her wide-brimmed hat, roses confected from ribbons of pale blue grosgrain. “She would have liked it.”
“Would you prefer to take tea on the terrace instead?” he asked impulsively. “It is a beautiful day without.”
“Yes, I would, thank you,” she said, smiling a little.
He ordered a tea table set up outside under an extended awning, with a white tablecloth and a few cuttings of the roses she was just admiring set in a crystal vase.
“I think it's high time I apologized,” she said, as they settled into their seats, side by side on a wide angle so that they each enjoyed an uninterrupted view of his gardens.
“That is hardly necessary. I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the dinner and found both the food and the company fascinating.”
“I don't doubt that.” She laughed, rather self-consciously. “For theater you couldn't do much better. But I wish to apologize for my entire scheme, from the very beginning, when I sent away all my servants and stranded my kitten in a tree so that I could demand your assistance.”
He smiled. “I assure you I did not participate in your scheme as an unwitting dupe. I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to be your temporary and rather churlish Sir Galahad.”
She colored. “That much I've surmised, believe me, from later events. But it still behooves me to apologize for my original deceit.”
Tea arrived amid much pomp and ceremony. Mrs. Rowland took both sugar and cream, the little finger of her right hand held just slightly extended, a delicate curl like a petal of oriental chrysanthemum.
“As much as I approve of your acknowledgment concerning this ‘original deceit,' it's your subsequent tale that concerns me more,” he said, ignoring his tea and watching her stir hers with a languid, creamy daintiness. “Would you apologize for that too?”
“Only if it were a blatant fabrication.”
In his distraction he took a sip of tea. He still disliked it. “Do you mean to tell me it wasn't a blatant fabrication?”
She went on stirring her tea. “After much thoughtful reflection, I've decided that I don't know anymore.”
He cursed his curiosity. And his lack of tact. A more circumspect man would not have asked the question and would not have to deal with the wide-open vista of her answer.
“Perhaps you could help me decide,” she said. “I'd like to know you better.”
I'm not a young woman anymore. So I've decided against a young woman's wiles in favor of a more direct approach. That, at least, was no fabrication. “What would you like to know?”
“Many things. But, most pressingly, how and why did you come to be the person you are today? I find it an intriguing mystery.”
His heart thudded. “No mystery there. I almost died.”
But she wasn't so easily satisfied. “My daughter almost died at age sixteen. That experience only made her more of what she already was, not a different person altogether—which you, by all accounts, have become.”
She raised her teacup and let it hover just below her lips, her wrist as steady as the pound sterling. “My instincts tell me that I cannot understand you until I know the story behind your transformation. And that your story is more than a man's brush with death. Am I wrong?”
He considered a variety of answers and rejected them all. Having enjoyed the privilege of bluntness his entire life, he was ill-suited to suddenly take up prevarication.
“No,” he said.
The teacup continued to linger in the vicinity of her chin, a shield almost, a disguise too, to hide her dangerous perspicacity behind a bit of glazed fine bone china painted with ivy and roses. “If I may be so forward, was there a woman?”
He didn't need to answer her question. But then, he didn't need to invite her to tea either. He didn't know his plans any more than she did hers, possibly a lot less.
“Yes, there was a woman,” he answered. “And a man.”
Her features froze in momentary shock. Carefully, she set down her teacup. Presumably the stability of her wrist was no match for the excitement of her rather salacious imagination.
“Goodness gracious,” she mumbled.
He laughed a little, with rue. “Would that it were that kind of uncomplicated sordidness.”
“Oh,” she said.
“You have probably heard about the hunting incident. I was shot, bled profusely, was put into surgery for six hours, and barely survived,” he said. “But you are right. That in itself had no more life-changing effect on me than a hangover or a bad case of indigestion.”
A week after Langford was out of danger, Francis Elliot, the man who'd shot him, came to see him. Elliot had been a classmate at Eton, the one whose house in the next county Langford had frequently visited when he was home on holiday. Over the years, their once-close friendship had gradually cooled, and they saw relatively little of each other, Langford living fast and footloose, Elliot settling down to be the staid, responsible, unimaginative landowner in the mold of his forefathers.
That particular morning, Langford, highly peevish from both pain and ennui, had lambasted Elliot on his shoddy marksmanship and slandered his manhood in general. Elliot held his tongue until Langford ran out of pejoratives—no easy feat, as Langford, trained to be a man of letters, possessed a near-infinite supply of belittling words.
Then, for the first time in his life, Langford heard Elliot shout.
“It turned out that the man who shot me did so deliberately, though he hadn't meant to almost kill me. That was the result of nerves and bad aim—because I'd seduced his wife.”
Mrs. Rowland had lifted a cucumber sandwich. She went still. He'd shocked her without even getting to the worst part of it.
“I had no idea what he was talking about. I'd never met his wife as far as I was concerned, until I remembered, very vaguely, an encounter at a masked ball given by another friend of mine six months previously. There'd been a woman, a young matron with a forlorn air about her.
“What had been an evening's diversion for me, nothing more, had precipitated a domestic crisis for my friend. He loved his wife. They were going through a difficult phase, but he loved her. Loved her deeply, passionately, if also awkwardly and inarticulately.”
At first, Elliot's tale invoked in Langford nothing but contempt. He would never let a woman, any woman, matter half so much to him. Any man who did so had only himself to blame for such an idiotic attachment.
Then, after his initial outburst, Elliot did something startling: He apologized. Through gritted teeth, he apologized for everything—for his lack of character, his lapse of judgment, for taking his despair out on Langford when it was his own fault that his wife was unhappy in the first place.
Langford, still irked, accepted his apologies with no pretension of graciousness. But after Elliot's departure, he couldn't get the man out of his head, couldn't stop seeing the expression on Elliot's face as he apologized, an expression that held only self-reproach and a determination to do the right thing despite the avalanche of scorn he was sure to trigger.
With this unconditional apology, Elliot had proved himself, despite his earlier action, to be a man of fortitude, conscience, and decency—everything Langford scorned and despised as too plebeian for his exalted self.
“I didn't want to change or be changed,” said Langford. “The way I'd lived was a highly pleasurable, highly addictive way to live. I was loath to give it up. But the damage was done. I was shaken. In the subsequent days of my convalescence, I began to question everything I'd taken for granted about my choices in life. How many others had I hurt in my mindless quest for amusement? What worthy use, if any, had I made of my talents and my vast good fortune? And what would my poor mother have thought of it all?”
Mrs. Rowland listened with grave concentration, her eyes never leaving his. “What happened to your friend and his wife?”
It was a question that still plagued him in the dark of the night. From what he'd learned, they seemed to be fine, with no reports of shameful squabbles or unseemly fondness for the bottle. “I understand they have produced three children together. The eldest came along about a year after he shot me.”
“I'm glad to hear that,” she said.
“But that doesn't really tell us anything in and of itself, does it?” A man and his wife could very well procreate in mutual abhorrence. He wanted to picture for himself a family in harmony, but his mind would only paint images of silent, frightened children walking on eggshells around parents locked into a hideous bitterness. A bitterness for which Langford was responsible.
“Marriages are curious things,” said Mrs. Rowland. “Many are exceedingly fragile. But others are exceptionally resilient, able to recover from the most grievous injuries.”
He would like to believe her. But the marriages he'd known had been by and large indifferent. “You speak from personal experience, I hope.”
“I do,” she said firmly.
“Tell me more,” he said. “I demand something at least halfway sensational in return for the divulging of my own unspeakable past.”
She picked up her teacup and then, rather resolutely, set it down again. “Sensational it wouldn't be. The most sensational thing I've ever done in my life was blurting out to you that I wished to marry you. But it should come as no surprise now that I had indeed wished to marry you, more than thirty years ago.”
It was still a surprise to hear her speak of it so candidly.
“I believed I had the looks, the comportment, and your mother's approval. The only obstacles were your youth and your certain disinclination to marry a girl handpicked by your mother, but I considered neither insurmountable. When you were done with university, I'd still be of a marriageable age. And in the meanwhile I would educate myself in the classics, so as to distinguish myself from other women who would be vying for your hand.
“My plan no doubt strikes you as both arrogant and simpleminded. It was. But I believed fervently in it. In hindsight, I can see that we'd have dealt disastrously together—I'd have been dismayed by your promiscuity and you in turn repelled by my sanctimonious meddlesomeness, as my daughter has called it. But in those heady days of 1862, you were mythologically perfect and I was fixated on you.
“Needless to say, when Mr. Rowland began his courtship, I was not thrilled with his attention. I craved rank and disdained money made in sooty ways, whereas he possessed nothing but the latter. I didn't understand why my father welcomed his calls, until I did as well. Believe me, having to marry him for such a mortifying thing as my family's ruinous finances did not further endear him to me.”
There was regret in her voice. Suddenly Langford realized that the regret wasn't for him but for the long-departed Mr. Rowland. He felt an odd pulse of jealousy. “You mean to tell me your marriage eventually recovered from that grievous injury?”
“It did. But it took a long time. When I married Mr. Rowland, I decided to be a right proper martyr. While I refused to lower myself by seeking out your news or succumbing to affairs, I also refused to see him as anything other than a legal entity to whom I sacrificed my dreams for the sake of my family. Even when my sentiments finally changed, I didn't know what to do. It seemed ridiculous that I should feel something other than duty and obligation toward a man I'd called only Mr. Rowland for so many years.”
Her voice trailed off. She finally lifted the cucumber sandwich to her lips again. “We had three good years before he passed away.”
He didn't know what to say. He'd always considered happy marriages to be the stuff of fairy tales, about as likely as fire-breathing dragons in this mechanized age. He found himself ill qualified to comment on her loss.
In the silence, she ate the cucumber sandwich with great daintiness. When she was done, she shook her head and smiled wistfully. “Now I am reminded why polite society does not engage in rampant honesty. Awkward, isn't it?”
“Not so much as it is thought-provoking,” he answered. “I don't think I've had a more frank conversation in my entire life, on things that mattered.”
“And now we've nothing left to talk about except the weather,” she said wryly.
“Allow me to correct your misconception here, madam,” he said, with equal dryness. “I understand that beneath your facade of ideal femininity, you are a bluestocking who just might be learned enough to appreciate my vast erudition.”
“Oh-ho, watch that arrogance, Your Grace,” she said, grinning a little. “You might find it to be exactly the other way around. While you were out carousing nightly, I read everything that was ever jotted down during classical antiquity.”
“That may very well be. But have you an original thought on it?” he challenged.
She leaned forward slightly. He noted, with pleasure, the gleam in her eyes. “You have a few days to listen, sir?”
Chapter Twenty-five
3 July 1893
. . . picnic . . . capture . . . light . . . tree . . . shadow . . . purple . . .”
Gigi stared at Freddie's moving lips, her concentration stranded somewhere beyond the Cape of Good Hope. What was he talking about? And why was he speaking so earnestly of such incomprehensible and inconsequential things when barbarians had broken through the gate, torched the bailey, and were about to storm the keep?
They were in trouble. They were in trouble so deep and wide that the best alpinists broke down and wept halfway up and the greatest sailors turned around and headed home long before reaching the other shore.
Then she remembered. He was talking about “Afternoon in the Park,” and he was talking about it because she'd asked him to, so that they could carry on a decent conversation and that she could pretend, at least for the duration of his call, that all was well, that the smoke darkening the sky was merely the kitchen roasting a few boars for the evening feast.
She blinked and tried to listen more attentively.
Two days after their return to London, Camden had left to visit his grandfather in Bavaria. But the damage was done. He'd been gone more than a month now, and not one of the nearly eight hundred hours had gone by without her revisiting their last night together and catching her breath anew at his intrepid offer. Everything reminded her of him. The details of her own town house, which she'd barely noticed anymore, had suddenly become a narrative of all her once-fervid hopes: the piano, the paintings, the Cyclades marble she'd selected for the floor of the vestibule because it matched the color of his eyes exactly.
Had she made the right choice?
She knew what it was like to have made an unethical choice. She knew the fear and the corrosive anxiety that bled into and adulterated every joy, every delight. In this instance, she was fairly sure she hadn't come down on the wrong side of the moral divide.
But where was the sense of inner strength conferred by the right choice? Where was the peaceful slumber and the clear sense of purpose? Why, if she'd made the right decision, did it feel oppressive and, on some days, palpably suffocating?
She gave Freddie permission to resume his daily calls, to silence the gossip that the trip to Devon had generated. Freddie's renewed visits quelled the rumors but did nothing to soothe her agitation. The rapport they shared was still there, but the sense that they belonged together was becoming as frayed as a tenth-century tapestry, on the verge of disintegrating altogether with the least exposure to the elements.
“Freddie,” she interrupted him.
“Yes?”
She broke the moratorium on physical contact that had been in place since the day of Camden's return and kissed him.
It was always nice kissing Freddie. Sometimes even very nice. But she needed more than nice. She had to have something surpassingly ardent—a veritable conflagration—to erase the burning imprints her husband had left on her, to eradicate from memory her response to him, all hungry abandon and desperate need.
The kiss was very nice.
And she spent the entirety of it thinking of the very person she was hoping to forget.
She pulled back and pasted on a smile. “Forgive the digression. Go on, tell me more about the painting.”
Freddie looked to the door as if expecting to see tweeny maids giggle and then run off with news of what they'd espied. When the corridors remained silent, he leaned forward and tried to kiss her again.
“No.” She stopped him. She didn't want any more reminders of her vastly different reactions to the two men. Or of the fervor Camden effortlessly fomented in her. “We still shouldn't. That was my fault.”
Disappointment dimmed Freddie's eyes. But he nodded slowly, ceding to her wishes. “Three hundred and nine days to go.” He sighed. “I swear, the days are thrice as long as they were before.”
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