by Edith Layton
This was always the worst part of an affair, worse now, he discovered, because she was his employee, and he’d no idea of how to let her go. Should he offer to write out a recommendation? How much payment did she have coming to her? Mixing pleasure with money was a thing he vowed never to do again, for it complicated an already complicated situation. He realized he’d kept her on the way one might keep on an old retainer long after her services were inadequate to the need, simply because of sentiment, and the nagging knowledge that though hiring her on might have been for his convenience, it was her living. He groaned.
“I’m coming,” she said. “Hold your horses…or whatever.”
“Headache,” he mumbled. Coward! he called himself as he rolled over and buried his face in his pillow.
“I’ve something to make it feel better,” she sang, coming to the bed to lean on him, her lips to his nape, her knotted nipples prodding like accusing fingers into his back.
“No,” he sighed in a muffled voice, “not tonight, too much wedding, not enough sense.” He lay still and hoped she’d leave him to his supposed rest.
“Poor lad,” she said, trailing her fingers down his spine. Unfair, she thought as her eyes followed her fingers; even this way, he was beautiful, from the thatch of golden hair that overlong, curled to the nape of that strong neck, to the graceful but lightly muscled lines of his back, to his tight buttocks—he snatched the covers up and covered himself. But she didn’t have to see him again to know, back or front, how visually splendid he was. And kind, and gentle, and, tonight, oddly passive. It would do. Weddings did strange things to people, she knew. Although the one today had only hardened her resolve.
“All right,” she said. No sense beating a dead horse, and if he didn’t rise to the occasion, she thought, he must be half-dead. “Poor lad.”
She sat quietly for a moment and then she leaned down again, putting her lips close to the smooth, shining hair that curled next to his ear. The days were getting longer, and she was getting no younger, the time was right. Now or never, she told herself.
“Julian,” she breathed, and she saw his eyelids flicker so she knew he wasn’t sleeping. “Julian,” she said gently, “let’s get married, eh?”
He lay so still she thought he might have been sleeping after all, but then she noticed he wasn’t breathing.
“What?” he asked, turning around and resting on his elbows, staring at her with astonishment in those startlingly light, startled eyes of his.
“Yes,” she said comfortably, “it’s a fine idea. After all, what’s to do now? You’ve not got the big man to tool around the world with anymore. Where are you going to go now? Back to your house in the country? Pah.” She made a moue of distaste. “To be sure, for a week, and then you’ll find time heavy on your hands. London? But you know it inside and out. And what will you do? Pick out some simple miss at Almack’s and wed her and give her a babe to remember you by while you frolic in London again, like the other care-for-nothings? No, I know you, you’re restless, like me. It’s the Continent for us, Julian—this time, Brussels and Rome and the Germanies and all the fun they’re having there. Parties, fetes, gaming and gossip and pleasure. You and I, my love. What do you say?
“Oh, we’ll have your heirs in time, if that’s what’s stopping you,” she assured him as he continued to stare at her, counting in his mind until he breathed easy again, remembering she’d just done with her courses: She’d realized that too, bitterly. Because, she thought, regretting again that she’d moved in with him when the duchess had come to join her duke, a hint as to that possibility might have turned the trick. But not only had he been careful of late, but living so close these last days, even though he’d not requested sport, he’d have noticed she’d been unable to oblige him prettily.
“We suit, we do,” she said merrily, “and what better time than the present? And speaking of presents…” she continued far more gaily than she felt, for his silence wasn’t promising. She hopped up and went to her dresser top to sort through her jewel box. “Here,” she said, coming back to the bed and sitting beside him, holding out her palm with two small painted ivory circlets on thin golden chains for him to see. “Look what your clever Roxie had made up for us whilst you were tending to your big friend all those days. See? A miniature of me, for you, and one of you, for me. I had the artist come and stare at you at the opera that night. But look, he’s made you ever so much handsomer than me, poor lad, he took a fancy to you, I think.
“Here,” she said, taking the ivory circlet with the portrait of an idealized Roman god, he thought, and fastened it about her neck. “Now you can pass all your time lying on the parts you like best.” She giggled but then said quickly, noting his wide-eyed silence, “All the Quality are doing it—exchanging portraits—some just with pictures of each other’s eyes, can you believe it? I was going to have him paint ours, but you were far too handsome to waste the rest, he said, and so he did all, and for the same price. So here, for you,” she said smugly, leaning forward to fasten a similar circlet with a twin blond lady about his neck, “there—so when you take off your shirt to another lady, I can keep my eyes on her,” she laughed.
But then she suddenly sobered, and sitting there, naked, she poked her finger into his chest. “And if that’s bothering you, Julian, my word on never interfere. I know gentlemen, after all. No, you go your way, I’ll go mine, in time. For nothing stales like a clinging female, I know that. You’ll see, once the glow’s gone, I’ll not hang about your neck—that’s what the portrait’s for, just to remind you who to come home to, when you’re done. So!” she said, sitting back and smiling at him. “When shall we do it? It don’t have to be a grand affair, just soon, so we can be off for some real fun.”
He breathed in so deeply that her portrait rose before her eyes before it fell as he spoke, slowly, sincerely, and quietly, as he took hold of one of her hands.
“Roxie,” he said, his light eyes tender, “it cannot be. We’ve had our fun. And for all it’s been exciting, it’s enough now. I never promised more, remember?” he asked evenly. “And, Roxie, sweet,” he said, smiling lightly now, in a teasing, knowing voice, “you don’t expire from love of me, don’t pretend to it. I offered some amusement, I took a great deal more, I know. But there’s an end to it.”
“Love isn’t for people like us,” she said, relentlessly smiling, trying to make him see the truth of it, “but we do suit. We have fun and we please each other, and we’re neither of us getting younger. See here, my lord, dukes have been known to wed fishmongers’ daughters, and I’m no common tart. My father’s a squire, no less, and I’ve friends in high places. But I chose you, and for all you said it was for a night, it became a week, and the week became a month. Let’s let it become a year and more and more. You’ll not do better, my lord.”
Once, he thought, she might well have been right. Once, before he’d seen how Warwick had grieved and grown through his love, how Arden had agonized and then been exalted in his. He didn’t speak of rank or station then, nor of the difference between mistresses and pure young misses, for none of that mattered. He spoke at last from his heart, as much to her as to himself.
“Roxie,” he said, “no. It would never do. And it’s nothing to do with you. It’s just a whim of my own. I want to love madly, foolishly, and completely absurdly when I take a wife. I don’t know if I can, but I’d like to try. I’ve always sought pleasure, and I begin to think it would be the greatest one I’ve known. You and I know another kind of ecstasy, but what I seek is so much more profound I believe it must be very like suffering in its intensity. Or so I’ve seen it to be, at times, in my friends. I miss that. I don’t know if I can ever feel it. But I believe I need to, Roxie, I really believe I do.
“I wouldn’t want to share that love neither, and I think I’d strangle my wife before I’d calmly allow her to sport elsewhere. And”—he shook his fair head ruefully—“I’d hope she’d want to slay me for so much as undoing my topmost shirt button
before another woman. It ought to be that sort of mutual passion, I think,” he mused, “at least, only that sort would move me to wedlock. In truth, I don’t know if I’ll ever find it, it may be I just enjoy the suffering in looking for it. But I think I must seek it out, and so I can’t marry you, for all you may ultimately prove to be right, for we may well be alike,” he said sorrowfully, raising his arms to unclasp her portrait from around his neck and lift it off his golden chest, as he sighed, “but I really think I must.”
She didn’t entirely understand him, not the most of it, he was often too deep for her, but although not profound, she was quick enough, and knew good-bye however it was said. She snatched the portrait from his fingers and rose from the bed in one swift movement.
“Then I know who’ll want this—and me,” she said furiously, marching back to the dresser and pulling her clothes on. “I’m not going to wear this willow,” she promised as she threw her other belongings into her portmanteau, emptying her dresser table as rapidly as she spoke, “and when you realize your mistake, my lord, I’ll be long gone and nowhere you can find me, bet on it. I’m not without friends or opportunities,” she vowed, panting from emotion as well as effort as she flung items out from the wardrobe.
“Roxie,” he said gently, rising and standing beside her and placing a hand on her shoulder, “no need to tear off like this. We’ll have time to say good-bye properly. Where are you going at this hour of the night?” he asked sadly. “It’s blowing up for rain, it’s late, come to bed, and we’ll settle things in the morning.”
“No time like the present,” she said, shrugging him off, buckling up her bag, and stuffing the last of her things into a smaller case. “I’m off to Southampton, and then to the Continent, and,” she said, wheeling around and sneering, “not alone. Oh, no. You remember my handsome young Graf? Well, he’s plagued me by courting me for weeks, all unbeknownst to you, and he’s a title and a fortune and a yacht, so one word from me, which I’ll give him for he’s not more than a few streets from here, and we’ll be off. And I’ll have wedlock this time, depend on it. Well, my lord?” she asked, ruffled and distraught, pink with anger and disheveled, her hands on her hips, looking, he thought, more charming than he’d ever known her in the honesty of her rage in that moment. “What’s your last word, last chance…?” she asked, staring challenging at him.
“Don’t go,” he said reasonably. “Think it over, calmly. But I offer no more.”
“Damn you!” she raged, and tore the chain from her neck to throw his portrait in his face.
She went to the door as he stooped to pick up the locket, and then paused to look back at the living bit of statuary that had so entranced her. Her eyes narrowed. Now she played her last card.
“I’ll wait awhile before we leave,” she said, as though she grudged it, running her gaze over him. “His yacht’s the Roxanne. The paint might still be wet, for he just renamed it after me.” And laughing at last, she hefted her cases and left him, smiling secretively to herself at the look upon his handsome face, as she hurried down the stairs and into the night.
He drew on a robe and held his aching head and sat by the window for a long while, staring at times at the portrait of the insipid, inhumanly beautiful face of the painted blond man, and at other times he gazed thoughtfully into the cool, sweet-scented early-summer night.
22
It was a fine, clear sunny morning, and yet there were so many present that some more luckless members of the congregation had to crane their necks to get a better look at the incredibly handsome gentleman who stood before them all. There was a great deal to see, from the presence of such thrilling strangers as the elegant duke and duchess and the giant gentleman and his wife who had come from the mainland for the occasion, to the magnificently good-looking young viscount who stood before the minister. Then the minister cleared his throat to commence the service and the company quietened, even there in that quiet place, so as not to miss a word.
But he only said the usual things before he began with the too-familiar service, not adding a drop more to the little they knew already as he gave his sympathies to her family and offered condolences to the blond gentleman who might, if the gossip were true, well have been her bridegroom, instead of her chief mourner this sunny July morning. As they were all islanders, these former friends and neighbors and acquaintances of poor drowned Roxanne Cobb they all grew still, nodding their heads, knowing the vagaries of that untrustworthy sea around them, knowing the same regret for Roxanne and the young German gentleman who had been out on his yacht with her when the weather turned, as they’d felt for hapless family, friends, and neighbors for generations before. Their thoughts then turned, as always, from shocked sorrow to wonder as to whether or not they could have done better with the steering than the unfortunate foreign gent’s crew had, so as not to have ended them all cast up upon the shore, with their broken ship, too late.
The blond gentleman did not cry, but then, gentlemen didn’t, but he looked, with his alabaster face so still throughout, like one of the carved angels on a neighboring stone. And he could think, all the while, only that it was a pretty place, this green copse behind the white church, even though it was defaced by the thin, tall stones, their names and sorrows picked out with lichens and moss, as out-of-place in this summer morning as rows of blackened teeth in the green maw of the churchyard. As out-of-place as she was here, in this peaceful place, far from the lights and laughter of the Continent, where she’d yearned to be. As he was as he stood as dry-eyed and stony-hearted as a statue of remorse.
Because it had all come too soon. She’d left a note for him, it seemed, in Southampton, and then after they’d broken up in the storm, someone thought to contact him in London, where he was just beginning to forget her. She’d waited a day for him, they’d said, and finally, laughing too loudly, had gone off with the foolish overeager young man to her death. All, he knew, as he stood and listened, cold and tall and unmoving as any of the stones about him, because of him, of course.
When the ceremony was over and the crowd dispersed to the squire’s house for the funeral drinks and sweets and reminiscences, he remained in the churchyard, his hand numb from the many people who’d shaken it, his heart number.
Warwick and Arden were speaking around him, he knew, and he knew he’d best listen, for he wouldn’t be hearing their voices again for a long while.
“He’ll stay with us, of course,” Warwick was saying, “the christening’s soon, and he’ll be right on hand for it that way.”
“But the lakeland is tranquil this time of the year, the peace of it will do him good, he’ll travel down with us, Duke, when we come to the christening,” Arden insisted.
“He’ll be sorry to disappoint both you gentlemen,” Julian said then quietly, but they stopped at once to look at him, as astonished as they’d be if they heard someone they were treading on rise up to chat, “but he’ll be going off today and so will miss both the tranquil lakes and the merry christening. I really must move on, my friends,” he said, smiling at last. For he’d resolved to show them he was whole, and wholly on his way to recovery, or they’d hold him here in England by main force. So he fashioned his mouth into the memory of a smile, and knowing the way that death invited laughter for the living, jested to show them he was undaunted by the woman who lay so still so near, because of him.
“And though I won’t be here for it, I insist on my rights as godfather,” he said, “except this time, let me get the girl. Arden can have the boy. What’s my goddaughter’s name, by the by?” he asked, as lightly as if he were standing with them in his club, and not a cemetery. But what better place, he thought, to speak of ongoing life?
It seemed Warwick agreed. “Philippa, followed by Anne, and then a great many more,” he said uneasily, but so theatrically that Arden, who was also watching Julian closely, responded with the same outside slyness—the sort, Julian realized, used in pantomiming for the very young or the very grieved, as he asked, “And the
boy, Duke, be sure to tell the boy’s name.”
“Yes, what is your heir’s name to be?” Julian said, glad they’d given him something easy to talk about.
It was worth it, when Warwick, on a sigh, muttered, “Buckingham.”
Julian laughed naturally and easily for the first time in long days.
“And this from a man who rued ‘Warwick’ and swore he’d adore being ‘Fred’ or ‘John’ in his schooldays?” Julian taunted him, as Susannah, turning from her quiet chat with Francesca, burst in, “But ‘Jones,’ you’ll admit, Julian, is hopeless. The boy needed something to stand up to his father with.”
“Never fear,” Arden put in, “I’ll train young Buck to stand up to the brute,” and they all laughed, and stopped only when they realized how empty-sounding the churchyard grew after that.
“No,” Julian said then, softly and decisively bringing them all back to what they never forgot but didn’t speak of, “I must go now, and put myself back together, you see. This time, alone. Last time, I’d Arden to help me grow up, just as he’ll help our new young Buck. But now I must get to know the gentleman I travel with, and so I have to go alone.”