Stealing Athena

by Karen Essex

  “You do not find it hilarious, Mary?” asked her friend.

  “Oh yes, but I feel a touch of croup coming on,” she said. She was desperate to be out of there, though she was terrified of what the rest of the evening would bring. “Perhaps I should leave.”

  Over Mary’s objections, Catherine’s husband accompanied her out of the theater, hailing her a hackney carriage, and delivering instructions to the driver. When she arrived at the hotel, she saw Robert in the gentlemen’s lounge, sitting in front of the fire, sipping a brandy.

  “Good evening, Lady Elgin,” said the high-hatted doorman as she walked through the reception area.

  Robert looked up immediately. It was as if his senses were heightened, like those of a falcon at the hunt. Mary met his eyes, but quickly turned away without acknowledging him.

  “Good evening,” she said to the man, and then hurried up the stairs to her room.

  She hoped that Robert would wait a respectable amount of time, but within ten minutes he was at her door, knocking softly. She opened the door and let him in.

  “I am here to reveal my deepest thoughts and feelings to you. There is no sense in equivocating,” he said. “I have made up my mind to speak to you. Please sit down.”

  “These are my rooms, I’ll thank you to remember. It is I who should invite you to sit down, and I am not certain that I am going to do it,” she said. “I am rather tired of men imposing their wills upon me. I am my own person. I shall decide whether or not I wish to listen to what you have to say.”

  He took a deep breath and sighed. “Yes, you are quite right. I do apologize. May I sit down? May I speak frankly with you, Mary?”

  “I don’t see how I might stop you,” she said. “I suppose it is best to get the deed done. You seem determined, even if you are on the path of destruction for us both.”

  “Good. I have neither the time nor the inclination to destroy us. Here is what I have to say. I love you, and I want to spend my life proving it to you. I will give you everything that your husband will not. I ask nothing of you. I do not require your money. I do not require you to have more children. I want nothing of you but the opportunity to see you every day, to walk down the road with you in this life.”

  He went on, listing her fine qualities and reviewing the escalation of his feelings since the time he first met her in Paris. She let him talk.

  “That is a fine speech, sir. I see that your time in Parliament has improved your already sharp oratorical skills. But your vision of our life together can exist only on some elevated plane, where the unadorned facts will not intrude upon your fantasies.” Her cool demeanor belied the thrill she felt on hearing his passionate words. “My mother believes that I am just another married woman you wish to woo.”

  “That is unfair, Mary. I believe that I have proven my devotion to you.” He looked genuinely hurt. His eyes probed hers, daring her to challenge his love again.

  “When I married Elgin, I was certain that he was mad for me. I have had to face the sorry fact that he was mad only for the ways in which I could benefit him. Might you have purposes yet unrevealed? I will not be a foolish woman yet again. Frankly, I will not allow myself to be another of your conquests.”

  “If it is time that you require, Mary, then I shall give you time. I only ask that I be allowed to visit you. I do not think I can live if I do not see you.”

  “You are very dramatic, sir. I believe that you would endure on this earth whether I return your affections or not,” she said, trying to bring the conversation around to a reasonable tone again. “I must control myself and contain whatever feelings I might have. Elgin is my husband. I am the mother of children. You are a member of Parliament. All that we have hoped for in our lives might be destroyed if we yield to our emotions.”

  Robert did not hesitate. “What I hope for in my life is you. Nothing else means rats’ blood to me. You know me, Mary. I despise the conventions of our society. I despise any capitulation at all to the opinion of others if it keeps you tied to this man. I will free you from him if it’s the last thing I do.”

  He knelt beside her, taking her hand and softly kissing and stroking it. It had been so long since she’d felt a man’s affection that she did not pull away. She felt entranced by this simple action that was igniting the sensuous part of her that she’d feared would lie dormant forever, now that she had rejected her husband. Robert put her hand to his cheek and held it there as if it were the most rare and precious of objects. “Oh, Mary, let me love you. You will not be sorry. We are meant to be together in the eyes of heaven, and heaven shall work out the details of our union. We must have faith.”

  She wanted to taunt him again, reminding him of his lapsed faith, but the heat of his face on her hand, and the intense look in his eyes, made her keep quiet. He sat next to her on the sofa. He kissed her hand over and over until she sighed. Then he slipped his hot hand behind her neck, bringing their lips together.

  It was like nothing she had ever felt before, though she had kissed her husband a thousand times. This was a merging of lips that felt as if they had been made to fit together. He kissed her bottom lip, and then the top one, and then took her bottom lip between his teeth ever so gently. She’d loved her husband for a long time, and had loved his touch upon her, but she’d never felt this sort of perfect absorption in another being before.

  He did not leave her room. He stayed all night, kissing and caressing her and talking to her. “Do you see, Mary? I will do nothing to hurt you. It is enough to be next to you, to touch you and smell your sweet smell and taste your sweet lips.”

  They talked late into the night, and then slept side by side for a little while. He awoke before dawn, waking her with soft kisses on her temple.

  “I must go, before the staff is awake and haunting the halls,” he said.

  Suddenly she felt as if she were in a play about an adulterous wife; as if she were some comedic character without morals, deceiving her husband. “What have we done, Robert? We must forget this evening. It can come to no good. I will close my eyes, and after you are gone, I will erase all memory of this night from my mind. I insist that you do so too.”

  She felt ill, knowing that she had broken down the wall that had protected not only her reputation, but also the moral and societal codes that she had been raised to obey and had lived by. She felt adrift, as if she could no longer define herself. She was no longer the person she always thought she was and would be—a respectable woman, protected by her honor and her actions. What was she now? How was she different from Emma Hamilton and all the other scandalous women in the tabloids? Even if no one ever found out, she would have to live with her transgression.

  “What have we done? We have begun our lives, Mary. Nothing in my life mattered until now. You shall see. There is nothing we cannot endure if we are together.”

  SHE ALLOWED HIM TO visit. Briefly, at first, and always in the presence of her mother and the children so that servants and neighbors, eager to impress others with their knowledge of the much-talked-about Lady Elgin, could not spread evil rumors of their conduct. Soon, though, the visits became prolonged. A sense of ease existed between them that she had not experienced with Elgin. Robert was content just to be in her company. She did not have to work tirelessly on his behalf. Unlike the lady in Mr. Goldsmith’s play, she did not have to dissemble in order to gain his love. He didn’t seem to want her to do anything at all but be his.

  It had been two months since their encounter at the hotel. They had restrained themselves, but Mary had longed to feel the perfection of his kisses once again. She had heard nothing from Elgin. He was away in London, doing God knows what. She found that she did not much care what he was up to so long as he left her alone.

  Robert had no problem describing his hopes and expectations. While a gust of November wind blew against their faces, muffling their voices so that the children could not hear, he painted possible scenarios that might arise, leading to their ultimate happiness. Elgin w
as her husband, true, but he was in poor health and could die. “I am prepared to wait for that eventuality, if necessary,” Robert said. “I have known Elgin longer than you have, Mary. His arrogance will get the best of him, if his health doesn’t do him in first. If you continue to refuse to produce heirs, he will find someone who will. He will divorce you.”

  “What? He cannot do that! That is unheard of. Sir, you are fantasizing.”

  “He will not simply live in celibacy. He is a man, after all. He might just find a mistress and leave you alone for the rest of your lives. Many married people enter into that sort of arrangement. I was a third party in that sort of thing, remember?”

  “It is one thing for Elgin to take a mistress. It is another entirely for me to be someone’s mistress. I could not live under such veiled circumstances, Robert. I simply could not.”

  “Then we shall have to wait and see what Elgin proposes. Mark my words, Mary. He will propose something. It is up to you to be prepared for it, and for us to take advantage of whatever it is.”

  Late in November, without warning a letter arrived at Archerfield. Mary felt herself grow faint as she read it. Elgin was arriving at Broomhall within the week and he hoped that she and the children would be there in their rightful home when he got there. He would give in to her request and try to live with her on her terms.

  MARY SCRAMBLED TO GET the house ready for Elgin and for the children. After so long a time away from him, free of his demands, she was resentful at being expected to once again work round the clock to make things nice for him. When they were in Constantinople, she would spend long hours dreaming of the day that she would make Broomhall their home. Now she dreaded living in its chilly emptiness. There was no money to fulfill the decorating plans she’d made long ago, and she was not about to borrow from her parents to create a warm and beautiful home for a man she’d come to despise. What was she to do? The thought of Elgin repulsed her, but she comforted herself with his words in the letter. I shall try to live life with you on your terms. That meant only one thing: separate bedrooms and no physical contact.

  Robert was crestfallen when she told him what Elgin had proposed. He tried to talk her out of agreeing to the arrangement, but as she pointed out, she had little choice. She would not give Elgin any cause to take drastic measures. If she refused to live with him, he might be able to find grounds upon which to sue her for divorce. He might also find grounds for taking the children. She had to attempt to cooperate.

  “He won’t last,” Robert said. “Mark my words, Mary. Stand firm and refuse him your bed, and he will be gone in a fortnight. You must exasperate him. You must let him know that you consider his approach a violation of your person. That will force him into a separation, I assure you.”

  She had no idea what to expect. Elgin returned to Broomhall, making a great show of his willingness to adhere to Mary’s terms. For the first few days, he did not seem to mind the situation. He behaved magnanimously, as if he were trying to impress upon her his acceptance of her terms. He smiled pleasantly at anything she said, but he did not seem to be truly listening to her. He was very affectionate toward the children. He spent long hours in his office or library, reading a book or buried in papers of one sort or another. They dined together politely, but his conversation was minimal and impersonal.

  She was sure that he had a mistress with whom he must be quite preoccupied, and she found that she did not care. If that was to be their arrangement, so be it, as long as it kept Mary from the marriage bed—which, frankly, she did not think she could endure with Elgin, so far had her feelings for him fled—and its consequences. They would live together as friends. It was a fate that other couples happily endured.

  After the first week had passed, he became perturbed. He started to send barbs her way about “a woman’s duty.” His health got worse—always a sign of unhappiness. His coughing fits returned. He would get up and leave her company without excusing himself, locking himself in his room for hours upon end.

  “Tell Lord Elgin that I am going to visit William’s grave,” she said to his valet. In the last few days, they had started to communicate exclusively through the servants.

  “Shall I ask him if he wishes to join you?” the man asked as a formality. He undoubtedly knew the answer. One could cut the tension between Lord and Lady Elgin with an axe these days, and no one was quicker to pick up on tension between the masters than a house servant.

  “No, I wish to go alone,” she answered.

  The Dunfermline Abbey was a somber place on any given day, but on this gray, blustery morning in December, it cast a particular gloom. Mary did not often visit William’s crypt. Memories of him put her in a state of melancholy that she did not like her other children to witness. Sometimes, the very touch of those warm, living children, animated and glowing, kindled a memory of William, which would send Mary’s heart sinking and her body back to a darkened bedroom for the day. She hoped that this would eventually pass. Life is fer tha living, her old nanny used to say whenever someone mourned excessively. Mary knew that was correct, but she had no control yet over the way that thoughts of her lost little angel overtook her.

  William had been laid to rest above Elgin’s oldest brother, after whom the baby had been named. That boy had been Earl of Elgin for only six months before he died. They might have thought about passing on the unlucky name, rather than trying to obey tradition and honor the dead earl. Had that mattered? Mary did not like to be superstitious, but she always looked for any reason that God might have punished her by taking away the child she loved most.

  Mary passed her hand over the face of the crypt, running her finger over the boy’s name, which seemed the only way that she could touch him. He was surrounded by members of Elgin’s family, but it had been Robert who had placed his little body in the crypt. Elgin had upset her after William’s death by ordering an extravagant crypt for his little son, which would have entailed rearranging the bodies of his ancestors. Mr. Nisbet had intervened to prevent that unwise move. The last thing that Mary had wanted was to be reminded of her baby’s death by going into even deeper debt over his burial. Everywhere she looked on the monument she saw the name Elgin. Elgin, Elgin, Elgin. Here was her little tyke lying among all the dead Elgins, people he did not even know.

  There was something unsettling about William’s place of rest, though Mary could not identify it. It seemed as if he did not belong there, lying for eternity amid ancestors he had never met. She thought that she might propose to Elgin that they move the body, but to where? Suddenly, it occurred to her: She did not even consider William to be Elgin’s baby. Though the child had, in fact, been sired by the Earl of Elgin, in her heart she had always imagined him, albeit unconsciously, to be Robert’s child. It was Robert who had aided her during the last horrid days of the pregnancy and the long weeks of recuperation. It was Robert who had held the infant in his arms, and it was Robert who had promenaded proudly with the two of them through the parks of Paris, his strong arm supporting Mary as she slowly recovered her strength. She had leaned on that arm so many times over the years when Elgin’s demands, on top of the normal demands of being his wife, overwhelmed her. For the last few years, ever since the moment that Elgin was incarcerated by the French, she had gradually begun to think of Robert as her heart’s companion.

  Mary pondered her grim situation. She was twenty-seven years old. What if she lived to be seventy, like her great-aunts and other dowager ladies seen about the world, long widowed, alone, and hobbling about to events on the arms of patient and indulgent nephews? Was she to spend the next five or six decades without love? The only reminder that her fate need not take this turn were Robert’s letters, which he sent via messenger almost daily. She did not need the reminder. All she thought about was Robert. She knew that she had to find a way for them to be together. Someone of her temperament could find peace in a passionless marriage for only so long. Whenever she tried to bury her emotions, a letter would come from Robert, reawakening
memories of what it was like to be loved. Yet what were her choices? Divorce was unthinkable; it was impossible for a woman to initiate unless her husband was monstrously cruel. Even then, divorces were rarely granted. People of her class—of her character—did not divorce. Divorced women were marked, tainted, shunned. Mary would not do that to her children, to her parents, or to herself, not even if she had the legal grounds to do so, which she did not.

  She went home and locked herself in her room and began to write.

  Today I went to see my beloved William’s grave. Friend, it was you who placed that adored angel there. Perhaps if he can see and know what is passing in the world, he can intercede for us. Elgin is agitated with me and doesn’t speak. He is keeping his promise, but I hardly think he can adhere to it for long. For our sake, I hope he will not. Friend, I do know how happy we can be together. As soon as Elgin tires of our arrangement and abandons me, which I assure you he will, for I know the man, I will be yours. We shall yet be happy. I am never away from you. Every instant of the day, my thoughts shall be on you. I shudder to think sometimes that nothing but death can free me. I do not wish to compromise you now that you are an M.P. Yet I cannot bear the idea that people think of me as Lady Elgin, living with him, and not you. God in heaven blesses you and honors you, my dear Robert. Let us be patient and pray.

  Your own Mary

  An answer came immediately, but Mary did not receive it, nor did she see it until Elgin burst into her room waving it in her face and reading aloud its contents: “‘Now I know that my Mary loves me and ever will love me until she sinks into the grave! Oh, most adored of beings, we shall forever enjoy the delight and happiness which only hearts united like ours can feel. I shall wait for you and upon you forever.’”