Celeste was smoothing out her gown for the second act. Their eyes met across the bright blue cloth. Celeste’s face was scarlet; she was fiercely protective of Marguerite.
“Never you mind them,” she said. “That Teddy Clinton doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He meant you to hear it, madam.”
Marguerite didn’t answer. She looked down at her hands, smudged with newsprint, and, looking up, she caught sight of her face in the mirror, grotesquely bright in her theatrical makeup. She knew that Teddy had stood outside her door deliberately, that he had spoken those words just to hurt her. But she also knew that what he said was true.
Twenty-Five
LAWRENCE HAD COME home late the night after the argument. Bell had been in bed, but sleeping had proved impossible. She’d smelled brandy on his breath, and something else, something unfamiliar that she might have thought was sex but was more likely perspiration and the smells of a barroom on his clothes. He undressed sloppily and came to bed. She didn’t speak, afraid of his reaction, but she was relieved when he reached for her. But his touch was rough, and she stiffened. He flipped her on her stomach and lifted her flannel shift and took her when she was still dry and closed to him, roughly, angrily. Her mouth opened with the pain, and she bit the pillow. Dry sobs shook her body, sobs of shame without tears. He fell immediately asleep.
Bell awakened early that morning, and with only a shawl around her thin flannel shift, she washed herself, shivering at the cold water on her thighs, wincing when it stung. She sat in a kitchen chair with an untouched mug of tea and thought for the first time in a long while about Columbine’s accusations of six years before. For the very first time, she faced the fact that they might be true. Lawrence’s brutality the night before had given her a window into his mind. There was an engine which drove him which she knew nothing about. The thought frightened her, and she didn’t want to face it.
But then Lawrence awakened, contrite, sick, his handsome face pale underneath its stubble. He shambled into the kitchen in his trousers, his suspenders trailing. He was so miserable, so like a child, and touched her hand so tenderly she was confused. Still angry, she made his breakfast in silence. He ate, drank an entire pot of tea, and then looked at her with those startling eyes, now cloudy with remorse.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I think we should get out of New York. We could go to Europe. Italy.”
Too annoyed to speak, Bell sat quietly, hiding her impatience. She knew Lawrence was waiting for her usual immediate approving response, but she had to think.
At first the ridiculousness of it irritated her, but slowly, Bell began to consider it. Italy. It seemed so far away. That could be good, actually. But neither of them could speak Italian. She knew French and Russian and Yiddish—couldn’t Lawrence pick a more convenient country? “Italy?” she asked.
“We could live cheaply there,” he said, encouraged by the fact that she was talking to him. “It’s warm. And the movement is strong there, Bell. It’s growing, it’s open to new influences. I wouldn’t run into the same prejudice I do here.” She made an impatient movement, and he saw that he’d taken the wrong tack. “But that’s not important. We’re important. We’d have sun and new hopes, not old influences. We’d marry, have a family.”
“Marry?” she echoed.
“We’d have to, it will be easier for emigration purposes. Besides, Italy is a damned papist country. Bell, it would be a new start for us, can’t you see that?”
“But how could we afford it?”
“We could borrow the money,” he said.
“Borrow money?” she said, baffled. “But we don’t know anyone with money.”
“We know Columbine Van Cormandt,” he answered.
Columbine asked the butler to repeat the name twice. Bell had rebuffed any attempt at meetings after she’d been released from prison. Columbine had been rather hurt at the time, but she supposed that as long as Bell continued to live with Lawrence Birch, relations between the two of them were impossible. But why had Bell shown up at her door?
“Show her in the morning room, please.” Columbine picked the small room for its cheerfulness and warmth. It was snowing today, and a bitter wind was shaking the bare branches of the trees across the way in Central Park.
When she walked into the room, Bell turned. Columbine saw the changes in her face and her heart constricted with a fine pain. Bell looked tired and too thin. Deep shadows were under her eyes, throwing her pallor into relief. But her amber hair and her lovely eyes were the same, now with a sad beauty instead of their former sheen. She was nervous, and ironically aware of her nervousness; one arched brow quirked at Columbine in the old way. It was her old friend, her very dear friend, and Columbine felt moved at the sight of her.
“I’m so very glad to see you,” Columbine said, and before Bell could draw back, she embraced her.
Something about the open friendliness, the familiarity of the hug made something break inside Bell. Tears welled in her throat and she leaned against Columbine’s shoulder, feeling comfort there. A dry sob shook her body.
“What is it, dear?” Columbine murmured. “How can I help?”
Bell began to weep against Columbine’s shoulder. She could not stop herself, and as she wept she realized how long it had been since she’d been able to cry. Was it since she’d met Lawrence? She didn’t know.
Columbine patted her back like a child. Bell could feel that her old friend’s body was rounder, and she suddenly remembered that Columbine was a mother, that she had borne Lawrence’s child. Bell pushed away gently. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
Columbine took her hand and led her to the small sofa in front of the fire. She gave her a clean linen handkerchief and waited until Bell had dried her face and blown her nose a few times.
“Now,” Columbine said, “tell me how I can help you.”
“I need money,” Bell blurted out. “I’m so terribly sorry to come to you like this, but I don’t know where else to go. I want to make a fresh start, Columbine. Everyone in New York knows me, knows my face—or maybe I just feel that they do. Everyone connects me to the bombing, even though I wasn’t even tried.”
“Yes, memories are imperfect. Once you’ve been in the paper, they can say anything they want about you, and they usually do,” Columbine agreed. “I know that all too well. But what about Mr. Birch?” she asked hesitantly. She didn’t even like to say his name.
Bell looked down. “We plan to go together. It was his idea, actually. But Columbine,” she said earnestly, looking up, “I’ve thought and thought about it, and I think he’s right. Not just for the reasons he says. But for me. New York is so oppressive for us now. But perhaps in Italy things would change between us. Patterns would be broken and re-formed, and pressures would ease. We’ll marry and have a family, like a real couple at last.”
Columbine stared down at the toes of her boots. She could not quite believe that Bell was coming to her for money to run away with the man who’d attacked her. But Bell had never believed that story. And she was in trouble.
“I don’t think I understand,” Columbine said finally. “Wouldn’t living in a foreign country cause more pressures between you? You’d be thrown upon each other for everything then.”
Bell leaned tiredly against the sofa back. “It’s hard to explain, Columbine. I think I need to go to some strange place I’ve never been in order to find a new way to live. It’s so hard to break out in the small cluttered rooms, among the same tired routines. I know it isn’t… good, what we have. But it can change, anything can change.”
“Bell, forgive me if I offend you. But if you want me to help you leave Lawrence, you know that there’s always a place for you here,” Columbine said, placing her hand over Bell’s. “Or at Safe Passage House. Let me help you, Bell.”
Bell shook her head slowly. Her voice was wooden. “I can’t leave him. He’s part of me. The best way you can help me is to do what I ask. I know I have no right to come to you
, no right at all, except that once we loved each other.”
“Then you have every right to come,” Columbine said quietly. “But Bell, I’m worried about you. I don’t know if this is the right thing.” It was the most she could say. It felt like old times, to be sitting in front of a fire with Bell, discussing what should be done. Formerly, it had always been Columbine who was doing the confiding. But the same conversational rhythm was there, the same feeling, and though the circumstances were extraordinary, to say the least, Columbine drew a sense of comfort from the fact that Bell had come to her when in need. The friendship was a faint, flickering heartbeat, but it was there, alive between them.
Bell squeezed her hand. She hadn’t expected to be so truthful with Columbine, but then, she hadn’t expected so much open warmth from her old friend. “You must trust me when I tell you I don’t know any other way,” Bell murmured. “I can’t leave him.”
Suddenly, Columbine was afraid for Bell, and fear pushed her into irritation. “How do you know that?” she cried. “You speak as though you had no will, as though you were trapped. But nobody’s trapped in anything, Bell.” A shuttered look came over Bell’s face, and Columbine stopped. Though she’d like to say more, she had a feeling Bell would bolt if she did.
The shuttered look passed, and Bell looked merely sad. “I don’t feel trapped,” she said slowly. “I don’t know if you can understand this, Columbine. But I feel that the world is a world of strangers, and Lawrence is the only face that is familiar to me. That’s how it’s become. He is me. In all the world, I could never find a soul like his, so attuned to mine. He knows my baseness and my goodness, and he accepts all of it. I’d live for him and die for him, no matter what he does.”
Columbine wanted to shake her. “But these are abstractions, Bell. These are desperate, romantic dreams. You aren’t looking at him, you aren’t seeing him, you’re seeing something you’re projecting onto him. He’s treating you badly, I can see it. Look at you! I can see your misery, even if you cannot.”
Bell stood and gathered her gloves. The intimacy that had sprung up between them again was gone now. Her face was stony. “Then you won’t help me, after all?”
“Yes, I’ll help you,” Columbine said wearily. “I’ll give you whatever you need, and you don’t have to worry about paying it back.”
“I’ll pay it back.”
“Whatever you want, but please be assured I don’t expect you to.”
“Thank you, Columbine,” Bell said stiffly. “I’ll be in touch when I make arrangements.”
She held out her hand, and Columbine shook it. She would have liked to embrace her again, but she knew that Bell would not welcome such a gesture.
Bell turned to go, then hesitated. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “It’s awkward, but I must say it.”
“You can say anything to me, Bell.”
“It’s about your child.”
“Hawthorn?” Columbine was puzzled. “What about her?”
“I know that it seems ridiculous, seeing how things are. But I want you to know that if anything happened, we would take her. I just wanted you to know that. And I’d be a good mother to her, Columbine.”
“But why would you take Hawthorn?” Columbine asked, baffled.
“Because she’s Lawrence’s daughter,” Bell answered calmly.
Columbine stared at her. “Is that what you think? Is that what you’ve thought, all these years?” She reached out and grabbed the back of the sofa. “Oh, Bell.”
“Columbine, you needn’t dissemble. It’s all right, really.”
“Does Mr. Birch think this?”
Bell’s mouth was a thin line. “We haven’t discussed it.”
Columbine straightened. “Bell,” she said urgently, “Hawthorn is not Lawrence’s child. I told you once that we never had an affair, and that’s the truth. But even if you don’t believe that, please believe that Hawthorn is not his. You’ve only to look at her to see it.”
“I hear she’s blond,” Bell said tightly.
“So am I,” Columbine said.
“You can’t tell me she’s Ned’s!”
Columbine hesitated. She had promised Ned to keep their secret. But she knew Bell would never believe her if she didn’t tell her the truth. “Elijah Reed is her father.”
Bell looked into her eyes, and she saw that it was true. “Does he know?” she asked curiously.
Columbine shook her head. The pain in her face was so marked that Bell was taken aback. She saw that Columbine had a great, private pain that she held inside every day, never able to speak of it, never able to cry it aloud. Sympathy washed over Bell, and she reached out and pressed Columbine’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
She left silently, closing the door gently. Columbine felt that her last tie to the happy past went with her.
Marguerite was wearing a heavy veil, and already the snow had melted into ice which weighed down the veil and slapped her cheeks with frigid insouciance every time a blast of wind headed down Lexington Avenue. It was a ridiculous day to be out and about, and if she ruined her throat she would have only herself to blame. But she was in trouble, and she needed Toby, and he absolutely refused to go out. He was nursing a cold, and he’d somehow managed to get invited to the Bradley-Martin fete, which he would die rather than miss. So he was staying home with steaming towels and the excuse to drink as much brandy and hot water as he wanted.
She knocked on his door and heard a croaking voice tell her to come in. Toby was lying on the couch in the mohair dressing gown she’d given him for Christmas last year, a piece of flannel around his throat and a look in his brown eyes that was positively lugubrious.
“Really, Toby,” Marguerite said, stripping off her soaking hat with relief, “if you didn’t feel so sorry for yourself, you’d feel much better all round.”
“Fine for you to say,” Toby pronounced stuffily. “You’re as healthy as a bloody horse.”
Laughing, she shook out her skirts in front of the fire. “Delicate Daisy Corbeau as healthy as a horse? Don’t tell the papers.” She crossed to her things and took out a small paper parcel. “Look, I brought you lemons.”
“Oh, you are an angel.”
“I’ll mix you a toddy, a nice strong one.”
Toby glanced at her warily, his handkerchief halfway to his nose. “Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked suspiciously. “What do you want?”
“Just some gossip to cheer me up,” she said in a bright tone that didn’t fool Toby a bit. “Now don’t move, I’m going to make your toddy.”
“Are you sure you know how to boil water, petal?”
Marguerite laughed and went off to make the toddy. She poured in a generous amount of brandy, then added a bit more. When she gave it to him and he tasted it, Toby’s eyes widened, and he gave her a look over the rim.
“Well, you have to be well for the ball,” Marguerite said placidly, smoothing a blanket over his knees. She perched on the chair next to the sofa and looked at him expectantly.
Toby took a gulp of the toddy. “What are you wearing?”
“Well, I can’t quite decide between Madame Pompadour and a peasant girl.”
“Hmmmm. Why don’t you go as both? Arrive as a peasant girl, then change your dress in a room upstairs, and come down as Pompadour. You’ll be an absolute sensation.”
Marguerite clapped her hands together, delighted. “What an idea, Toby! I knew you’d think of the perfect thing.”
“But are you sure you want to come as Pompadour? Why not Marie Antoinette?”
Marguerite looked at him, her dark blue eyes shrewd. “I know why you’re suggesting that, Toby, and I don’t care.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said loftily. “Oh, my head aches.”
“You think I’m so ignorant I don’t know that Madame DuBarry and Madame Pompadour were both mistresses of Louis XV. And you think I never read the papers and that I don’t know that Mollie Todd is com
ing as DuBarry. But I know both of those things. And I know what people will say, and I don’t care. I’m married to Willie. I’ve got him.”
“Mmmm,” Toby said, sipping his toddy.
“Haven’t I?” she asked the question lightly, but her eyes stayed on his face.
“Of course you do, petal,” he answered quickly. “Just as you say.”
“Toby.” She put a hand on his arm. “Please tell me. Is Willie really in love with her?”
“How should I know?” he asked crossly, fussing at the blanket.
“Because you know everything,” she answered calmly.
He gave her a sharp look. “That’s why you came here today, isn’t it. It wasn’t to bring me lemons. You never come within a mile of me when I have a cold. You’ve come to harass me, to pump me, when I’m on my deathbed.”
“You’re not on your deathbed, you have a cold. And Toby, I really want to know. Please tell me the truth.”
The cross look left his face and surprise came over it. “You’re serious, aren’t you. Marguerite, this isn’t like you.”
Marguerite nodded. “I know. I’m not like me lately. Toby, I’m losing my life. I mean, I’m losing a life I didn’t even know I wanted. Or rather, I’m losing the chance to make my life into something I want. Do you know what I mean?”
“No,” he said. “But if you’re telling me that you’ve come to your senses, I’m all for it. Do you love Willie?”
“He told me that I had no idea of what can be between a man and a woman. He said I wasn’t a woman, that I was still a child. He said terrible things.” Marguerite pressed her lips together. “And I thought, if I only, well, was nice to him—”
“You mean if you slept with him—”
Marguerite nodded, too upset to be embarrassed. “That he’d come back to me. But he didn’t. So I need to know if he loves Mollie Todd. Because then I’ll know what I’m fighting against, and I can fight harder.”
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