by Marlowe Benn
Julia tested her legs to be sure they wouldn’t collapse like noodles beneath her, then stood with a sweep of her scarf. Philip and Jack watched mutely as one by one she tore in half each page she’d just signed. The pieces drifted to the floor.
“You can ho ho ho your cheeky largesse right out the window, Philip.” She laid the resurrected will on the desk. “I’ll merely collect what’s mine and be on my way.”
Both men elbowed closer to read it.
At last. At last! She neither needed nor wanted a penny of Philip’s or Lillian’s money. A more satisfying plan had begun to hatch in Julia’s mind. Could Jack be persuaded to render a withering caricature of his friend to accompany some particularly baneful excerpt from Pope’s Dunciad?
“My word,” Philip said, flopping back in his chair. “Most curious, but there you have it. No wonder Lillian kept asking about you. She loved nothing more than a good fighter. Your charging off after Naomi Rankin’s killer must have set the old girl’s larcenous scheme on its ear. Here I thought she was wrestling with a fever in those last hours, but it must have been the tattered remnants of her conscience. Well, congratulations, my dear. Those French milliners shall dance their jigs, and I needn’t miss Brahms’s Second tonight after all.”
He tapped at his right ear. “Side stall.”
CHAPTER 27
With Philip out that evening, Julia was free to gather a few essentials from his guest quarters and make for the Seville Hotel. The next afternoon she returned to finish packing her trunks. She locked the bedroom door, even though Mrs. Cheadle had confirmed that Philip was away. This was serious work, and she needed to concentrate. Christophine had schooled her in what went where and how. “Your stockings with your smalls, Miss Julia.” She had demonstrated while packing several weeks ago, lifting and replacing one neatly folded or rolled bundle after another. Julia was determined to avoid her housekeeper’s dismay at opening the cases next weekend in their London flat.
Mrs. Cheadle knocked with a promised pot of coffee. When Julia opened the door to accept it, it was Philip who strode in, tray in hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “only one cup. No need for flight, you know. You’re always welcome under my roof.”
That was droll.
“It’s high time to move my plunder, as you put it,” Julia said. “I’ve imposed on you far too long. I’m sailing tomorrow afternoon and can’t imagine ever returning. Your home is your own again and forever, Philip.”
He balanced the tray atop a wicker wastebasket, as the bed, writing desk, dressing table, and nightstand were covered with luggage, clothing to be folded, or flowers. “I won’t rest,” he said, “until you believe I’d never sign those papers. I may be a poisonous cad, but I’m no slink. I had no intention whatsoever to cheat you out of your inheritance. None.”
“And yet you pursued the matter with zeal. Positive glee.” Julia smoothed the wrinkles out of her clumsily folded pyjama trousers.
“What’s the fun of having a sister if you can’t give her a good dustup now and then? I hardly knew you, and then you turn out to be more full of beans than I am. It was too delicious to resist. I was weak, bored, brutish, whatever you like. But surely I’ve apologized enough.”
“What was fun and games to you was frightfully serious to me. You jested with my life, Philip. I’ll forgive you when there’s an ocean between us.”
He winced. “You wound me.”
“Is nothing ever serious to you? You prattle on but understand nothing.”
“You’re wrong there.” He sat on Julia’s gabardine suit, laid across the bed. “I understand plenty. Too late.”
She juggled rolls of lingerie in both hands, uncertain where to put them. She would not rise to the bait. Not anymore.
“It seems you’re not my sister after all.”
“Oh please!” Julia threw both rolls into the trunk. Not that horrid business about the missing marriage license. “Can’t you leave me be? For the last time, the last bloody, bloody time, I’m as much a Kydd as you are.”
“Not true.”
Fury reduced Julia to nursery warfare. Pain shot up her wrist as she delivered a stinging slap across his cheek.
He rubbed his jaw. “A stunner, I’ll agree, but true. Turns out you’re more Kydd than I am. Milo’s your father, all right,” he said, “but not mine.”
“What?” Julia sat hard beside him, squarely on her white chiffon evening frock.
“Seems Aunt Lillian ain’t my aunt. She spent the winter before I was born in Charleston with my parents—helping, as spinster sisters did—but apparently she’s the one who had the baby.” Philip’s face had become a perfect mask, lids lowered, nostrils taut, lips barely moving. Julia could only imagine the shock writ large across her own face.
“All hush-hush, you know. Milo and Charlotte returned triumphant, babe in arms. No wonder Lillian lived with us all those years. I had no idea. None. No one knew, apparently, until the old girl’s confession plopped into my lap yesterday afternoon. Now you’re the only other living soul to share her secret. I owe you that satisfaction.”
Satisfaction? What was there to give Julia pleasure? She felt a stab of sorrow for withered old Aunt Lillian. How had she borne such a secret for thirty-five long years? Alone in that sweltering room with dusty relics of her only child, the son with whom she bantered and boxed, yet who knew her only as an eccentric batterymate. She’d sacrificed her own comfort to ensure his after her death. Why had she never revealed the truth? Perhaps the secret was too ingrained. Perhaps she’d feared the risk of Philip’s resentment more than the chance for a closer bond. Frightful choice.
And Philip. What grief must he be feeling? To lose two mothers, after knowing one so briefly and the other, in a sense, not at all. Julia remembered her own weightlessness at her mother’s death. Sorry was too poor a word for it. She covered his hand. He lifted hers, kissed it, and returned it to her lap.
New realizations dawned. “This mean we’re not siblings?” she said.
“Not even remotely related. Joke’s on me, it seems.”
A rap sounded on the door. “The driver’s here for your things, miss.”
Julia jumped to her feet. “Thank you, Mrs. Cheadle. Please ask him to wait—five minutes.”
She scooped up her lovely chiffon and pushed it into the trunk. Christophine would have to forgive the wrinkles. “I have to rush, but please, Philip, this is hardly a joke. I am sorry, truly sorry. Such a shock. Are you all right?”
He stood, folded her suit into neat thirds, and deposited it in the trunk. “I’ll survive. We Vancills are a sturdy lot. You saw for yourself.” He busied himself with folding and tucking, fastening hatboxes and trunk straps. Julia flew about the room, gathering lingerie, securing toiletries, and scooping the last of her jewelry into its case. She paused at her Capriole box.
Another knock. “He’s rather impatient, miss.”
“Yes, yes. Almost ready. Two minutes!”
The fellow’s deep huff conceded one minute, nothing more. “Your secret is safe with me, Philip. I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone. You’ve been an atrocious brother, but then I’ve been a pretty poor sister. How about we forgive each other and call it another draw?” In some ways, she was beginning to understand, she required as much forgiving as he did.
“Here.” She gave him the Capriole box. “A token to remember me by. Juvenilia, mind.”
The door handle turned, and Mrs. Cheadle’s face appeared.
“I’m just coming now. Tell him—”
A burly fellow burst into the room. Philip drew Julia out of the way as the man latched and hoisted a trunk onto his trolley, pitched her toiletries case and three hatboxes on top of it, and careened out the door. Julia started after the lout, alarmed at the thud of bouncing leather, then turned back to Philip. “Agreed? Please?”
He flicked his fingers at her. “Of course. Scoot! Flee! Toddle forth!”
A crash in the hallway sent her swiveling.
>
“Oh, and Julia?” Philip caught her sleeve. “Best wishes with that swain of yours. I mean that. You may be losing a noisome brother but seems you might soon be gaining a florist’s shop. I’m glad things have turned out well for you.”
He set down the Capriole box and handed her a slim parcel from his inside breast pocket wrapped in brown paper. It was an octavo pamphlet of poems, simply bound in wrappers of green laid paper. Hymen, by H.D.: the book he’d searched for that night in the library. At first glance the printing was not too bad, the cover typography more attentive than usual, the title set in inline caps within a double-rule frame.
There wasn’t time for all that she might say. Philip touched her throat, clucking at her bruises, and kissed her cheek. She clasped his shoulders lightly in return, then felt a surprising strength as his arms folded around her. He held her for a long moment.
It was the embrace she’d thought lost to her since childhood, sturdy and tender, more than a friend’s and less than a lover’s. She’d come to New York to collect her inheritance—hers by right, not charity—and to conclude an unhappy chapter of her life. Yet in the thump of his heart against her breast, she felt the offer of something deeply generous, the one thing Philip could give her, which could only be a gift: the intimate bond not of family but of an irony even sweeter—the secret that they were no such thing.
Yes, things had turned out well enough, if her luggage survived as far as the taxicab.
CHAPTER 28
The weather was raw. Clouds hunkered over the harbor, and a wet breeze swept leaves and debris into sodden corners. A line of black taxicabs snaked by the principal entrance to the pier. Harried travelers shouted and scolded, directing caravans of trunks and suitcases and hatboxes into the care of stewards and luggage clerks. The Majestic was sailing in three hours.
Standing at a large window inside the terminal, Julia turned up the collar of her coat and watched arriving passengers call to wayward children, linger over goodbyes, fret with last-minute instructions to porters, and edge forward with paperwork in hand. At last she saw her. Against the tide of travelers, Julia slipped through the double doors. Her quick embrace surprised Glennis, halting her in midsentence as she lectured the driver on the proper handling of her alligator-skin luggage.
Glennis beamed. “Julia! What a tickle! I can’t believe I’m doing this. Deborah and I packed like fiends all night. What fabulous luck you scrounged me a ticket.”
As she chattered, four large trunks were hoisted onto a luggage trolley, with as many smaller cases wedged in among them. Glennis thrust the large jewelry case she was carrying into Julia’s arms and rummaged in her handbag to pay the driver, all the while ticking through the hasty decisions about what should go to her cabin and what to steerage. Her small mountain rumbled off to join the others.
“Funny, I knew this was the right thing to do as soon as you telephoned. I did think about it, I did”—she anticipated Julia’s caution—“but I knew at once. That house is like a tomb. I had to get out of there. I’d never survive till spring. It’s ghastly! Nolda hasn’t come downstairs once. She’d kick my shins if she did, she’s that sore. Chester’s just as bad, touchy as a hedgehog.”
She took back her case and clutched it, grinning like a princess on her birthday. “So I did it, Julia. Just like you said. When I told him I was thinking of sailing today and he started bleating again about my boo-hoo extravagance, that was it. I stood behind a chair so he couldn’t smack me and did what you said. I told him he had to let me go, or I’d tell the papers what happened to Naomi. I said we’d changed the deal, murder being murder—oh, you should’ve seen his face! Either he forks over my allowance, I said, no strings attached, and Miss Clintock gets Naomi’s dough, or I blab. I said it, just like that.” As her arms were full, she gave Julia’s shoulder a jubilant bump.
“Russell was there,” she went on, “and he about gawked his eyes out at me telling Chester what’s what, but he was a witness, and Chester knew I had him. So he ranted and spit and then went all tossy and ordered me to get on the boat and not come back. He yelled how he’d had enough, how he didn’t care where I went as long as I did it pronto. Like it was his idea. Ha! You are brilliant!”
Julia laughed too. Gambits that turned out well could be quite amusing afterward. Thank goodness Russell had been there to hold Chester to account. Courage opened the door, but power (or threat) carried one through.
“So I huffed right back at him, ‘Fine, if I must, I must,’ and ran upstairs to pack before he changed his mind.” Glennis shifted her armload and nuzzled Julia’s elbow. “I’m so glad to get away from him, from all of them.”
Julia asked if there was any news from the Winterjay household.
Glennis rolled her eyes. “I’ll say. Not a peep from Viv, but Edward says he’s moving to his club downtown. I heard him tell Chester he needs time to consider his future with a wife whose moral probity he can no longer trust.” Glennis’s chin dropped along with her voice in repeating the sanctimonious phrase. “He’s even thinking of declaring her an unfit mother and taking the children to his sister in Boston. Rich, huh? I mean, sure, she treated Naomi like rubbish, but who is he to point a finger? None of this would’ve happened if he’d just kept his poker stashed. You know? Plus he swore he’d never again draw breath in the same room with Nolda. Chester harrumphed and all, but I think Edward means it. Serves her right, but what a prune he turned out to be.”
Julia nodded. She recalled the tucked-away tearoom where she’d spent the afternoon of her birthday and the sight of Winterjay guiding a woman in navy linen to the hotel’s elevator. He’d no doubt scoff to recollect it; hardly a comparable transgression, he’d say. Merely a discreet tryst: a harmless dalliance. That woman and surely others too accepted his carnal attentions—proof, he believed, of all women’s acquiescence. The inference seemed ludicrous—given Naomi’s resistance, which he’d ignored as so much coquetry—and yet commonplace. As difficult as financial freedom was for a woman to achieve, sexual freedom seemed even more elusive.
Glennis glanced over each shoulder and tardily lowered her voice. “It’s just as bad at our house. The whole place is a blue funk. Nolda won’t speak to Chester, and he really won’t speak to her. He had her things moved into the old nursery upstairs, and when she screamed about it, he said she has to take her meals up there too.” She giggled. “Isn’t it a hoot? If ever there was a couple who needs to split, it’s them, but they never will. Too embarrassing. Ha! Serves ’em right.”
Julia listened throughout this storm of Rankin family news but said nothing. She felt none of Glennis’s surprise, only a measure of that grim recompense one feels when those who cause suffering are in turn made to suffer. While not exactly justice, at least there were consequences for all that proud perfidy.
“Plus Russell’s leaving,” Glennis said. “He told Chester he has to go away for a while, to New Mexico, I think. Well, that absolutely did it. I never put much stock in him anyway. Archie isn’t so bad. Now I just have to get back there and pin him down before someone else tries.
“Look.” She balanced the case on her hip and tugged the glove off her left hand to reveal the small diamond ring Archie had given her in August, the ring she’d shown to Julia once and then kept hidden in her jewelry chest the entire time they’d been in New York. “It’s kind of cute when you get used to it. I’m sure I can get something nicer later on. I cabled him yesterday to tell him to meet me. I hope he hasn’t forgotten or changed his mind. Men can’t do that, can they?” She laughed. “Well, I’ll just have to dazzle him all over again. I can flirt pretty well when I want to, you know.”
She wriggled her arm through Julia’s. “This is going to be such fun. I’ll get Archie to throw us a big party. You’ll see what a good hostess I can be. Plus April isn’t really very far off, and I need time to get a nice dress made and everything. We’ll get you something dreamy too. And then there’s sterling and crystal and all that. I have to tell the shops. You c
an help me choose. Oh, Julia, don’t make that face. You can’t say those things don’t matter. People will talk, and anyway, who wants a hundred salad bowls and shrimp plates and beastly little pictures of terriers?”
Who indeed, Julia agreed.
“Just think, by next summer I’ll be an old married lady. You’ll see how fun it is and nail down that David of yours too, if I have anything to say about it. We can meet for tea at Claridge’s, go to flower shows, wear hats the size of train cars. It’ll be a scream. I’ll start looking for a little flat in town near you, though I can’t say anything about that until after I’m married. Archie won’t mind.” Her shoulders rose. “I can’t believe this luck!”
Julia steered them into the correct line, where they slowed to a standstill. Glennis glanced about. Everywhere stood clusters of restless travelers, many sneaking peeks at their fellow passengers. Which might appear across one’s dinner table? Which would amuse or annoy over morning croissants or late cocktails? Any attractive possibilities for that most delicious of pastimes, a shipboard romance?
She turned to Julia. “Where are your things?”
“I’m not going,” Julia said, watching a nanny corral a small boy clutching a red balloon. “I’m staying in New York.”
Glennis gaped. “But you can’t. Julia, you can’t. We’re going back together.” At the small shake of Julia’s head, her voice went up an octave. “What about David? You’ll break his heart!”
Heads turned. A bright-blue toque with a fan of ostrich tail feathers tipped in their direction, its occupant studying the ship’s safety-instruction pamphlet.
Julia answered in the softest possible tones, grateful to be spared the much louder squeal Glennis might have made had she known a canceled wedding was involved. “His heart is quite resilient, I assure you. He’ll get over me quickly.”
“You are mad. Stark, raving loony. And what about your special maid, what’s her name? Won’t she be expecting you?”