by Megan Chance
He set the bottle on the bureau and stepped closer. “I don’t recall asking you to be poor with me.”
“No, but …”
His hand came to my waist. I was very drunk; that was the only reason that came to me as to why I didn’t step away, why I didn’t dodge his kiss. I didn’t mean to kiss him back. But the way he grazed his lips against mine, and then the way he kissed me, slow and easy, as if he had all the time in the world to do it … well, it seemed strange and rather fine and so different from the way I’d been kissed before, and I was dizzy from the whiskey too, and that must have been why I didn’t notice how he got me to the bed. I didn’t notice until I was there, and he was still kissing me and bringing me down upon it, and I felt his hand drawing up my skirt, the smooth heat of his hand against my skin, running up my bare leg—because it was bare, and I was the one who had bared it, and you are a stupid fool, Beatrice Wilkes. God, yes, I was. I meant to say no. What was I doing here with him? And then, when he drew away, I was going to say it. I truly was.
Except that what he did then startled me into silence. Except that before I knew what he was about, he was undoing the tie of my drawers and sliding them down, and I raised up to help him, though I hardly meant to. Then he knelt between my legs, and I had this moment where I knew he was going to fuck me and I wasn’t going to stop it, but that wasn’t what he did. He lowered his head, and lifted my knees over his shoulders and it was … he was … I felt the soft brush of his hair against my inner thigh, and then his tongue.… I heard a sound, a rush of breath, a moan, and I didn’t realize it was me, not until I was lifting my hips to bring his mouth closer and I tangled my hands in his hair to keep him there. I was sweating and jerking and making these little sounds I could not keep myself from making, and there was something building in me until I thought I would go mad with it.
In the end I let him fuck me after all. I even begged him to.
It was the sound of a wagon overturning that woke me. I heard the clatter of the wheels, the driver’s curse, the thudding, splintering crash, and an avalanche of bouncing thuds scattering over the road. I rolled over, thinking to scoot out of bed and go to the window to see when I realized two things: first, my head was pounding in a sick way, and second, Sebastian DeWitt was in bed beside me.
How stupid could one person be?
The chaos from the street below was loud, a horse’s whinny, the driver still cursing better than I’d heard in some time, but DeWitt slept on. I wondered if I could creep out without waking him, and then wondered where the hell I would go, and it was my room besides, and I knew I was a coward and hated myself for it, but I did not want to see his face this morning and know what I’d done with him last night—nearly all through the night, I amended with a silent groan. I mean, he’d been half in love with me before we’d started, and I did not want to hurt him and knew that now there was no way I wouldn’t. Because I had not struggled for thirteen years only to hitch my wagon to a spavined horse, and how the hell could I say to him that talent wasn’t enough? That I liked being his muse and I wanted him to admire me and write plays for me, but he couldn’t expect me to give up anything I’d gained, which meant Nathan Langley. What had happened last night was exactly what I’d meant to guard against.
I glanced at his back again, and then away, quickly, because even just that—his back, for God’s sake—brought a quick stab of desire. And I found myself wondering if it was so bad to want just a little more before I let him go. Maybe just one more time …
Stupid, Bea. I pushed back the sheet very carefully and made to get out of bed without rousing him. There was a restaurant around the corner. I would go there and wait until he was gone. I wasn’t going to the theater this morning, now that Lucius had taken me off Penelope, and so it would be hours before DeWitt would know where to find me. By then I would have thought of what to say to him. By then I would have a hold on whatever it was that made me want him.
I snaked a leg out, sliding to the edge—
“Not so fast.” He pulled me back onto his chest. His hand tangled in my hair, holding me in place as he kissed me. All my good intentions got tangled up in that kiss, and suddenly I was straddling him, and his hands were hard on my hips, and we were both panting and straining and every sore muscle I had was screaming, but my desire was as strong as his, and I couldn’t banish it. When we finally collapsed, and he kissed me lingeringly and well, I wouldn’t have said no to doing it again. Which was so strange I couldn’t fathom it. I’d never wanted to do it again. I’d hardly ever wanted to do it the first time.
Sebastian DeWitt was like those damned apricots. I never ate one that I didn’t want another. Which was why, when he tried to bring me down so he could kiss me again, I skirted away from him and said, “It must be late. You’d better go. You’ve got rehearsal. Lucius will demand a forfeit if you’re not on time.”
He gave me a lazy look. “I’m not under contract to him. He can’t fine me.”
“They’ll be waiting for you.”
“I imagine they can get along without me for a day.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to make Lucius angry.”
He traced from my shoulder to my elbow. “I don’t give a damn about that.”
“Sebastian, please,” I said desperately, pushing at him. He was solid as stone. “Lucius took me off the play. If you’re not there, what do you suppose they’ll think?”
“That I’m protesting. I am.”
“No. They’ve seen the way you look at me. It’s too much coincidence that we’re gone at the same time. They’ll think you’re with me.”
A pause. “Ah. Langley.”
I swallowed and nodded, preparing myself for his anger, for all that stupid male possessiveness. “I don’t want him to know. It could ruin everything.”
But all he did was sigh and sit up, pushing the threadbare sheets aside. “Very well.”
Very well? “You don’t … you don’t mind?”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Would it matter if I did?”
“No.”
“Then what else am I to do?”
I was disconcerted. How well he was taking this. “I expected you to be … jealous.”
He rose, going to where his trousers lay abandoned on the floor, picking up the underwear tossed beside them. “Langley’s not only your patron, he’s mine. Unless I care to give him up, which I don’t, or you, which I won’t, I imagine we’re better off keeping this secret.”
It was just what I wanted, wasn’t it? Yes, of course it was, but you know, this little disappointment lodged in me and wouldn’t quite get loose, which was the most stupid thing about this whole business.
I watched him pull on his underwear, and then his trousers. “You know … we shouldn’t … this can’t happen again. If Nathan were to find out—”
His smile cut my words dead. He stepped over to the bed and leaned down, whispering against my mouth, “He won’t find out.”
“When he sees you staring at me like some moonstruck calf—”
“He already sees that. Nothing’s changed.”
“I need to keep him from favoring his spoiled wife over me, and I can’t do that if I’m constantly thinking of you—”
“Will you be?” He smiled. “How encouraging.”
I slapped his chest in frustration. “You know what I mean!”
He backed away, that irritating smile still curving his lips as he picked up his shirt and shrugged into it. “You’re an actress, aren’t you? It should be nothing for you to fool a man like Langley, who’s so taken with his own importance he’s blind to all else.”
He was right, of course. Sebastian made it all seem so damn easy, and you know, I was suddenly afraid. I wished he would demand that I choose between him and Nathan so I had a reason to tell him to go to hell and leave me alone.
But instead he trapped me with that gray gaze, and said, “You never see Langley in the afternoons. Those hours between rehearsal and the performa
nce … those belong to me. He’ll never know.”
And suddenly I was thinking about having him again while the sun blazed through my west-facing windows, both of us sweating, and I couldn’t even speak.
He finished buttoning his shirt and shoved on his boots, and then he grabbed his frock coat from the settee. And I couldn’t keep from saying, “And you probably want to keep this a secret from Mrs. Langley as well, don’t you?”
“She already suspects it.”
“She does?”
“She knows you’re my muse—what else should she think?”
“I thought muses were exalted beings. You know, like angels or something. Beyond common … fucking.”
He laughed. “Oh, I think the best ones are wrestling in the mud with man, so to speak. You know. Debauched.” He gave me a look that made me blush, and then he stepped over and kissed me, and I found myself leaning into him and wanting him, so he laughed when he pulled away. “Don’t go anywhere. I want to think of you waiting for me just like this.”
Then he picked up his satchel and slung the strap over his head, and he was gone, and I was still sitting naked on the bed and feeling as if something I’d wanted badly had just slipped through my fingers, and wasn’t that brilliant? If I felt this way after one night, how the hell would I feel after two? Sebastian DeWitt frightened me more than I wanted to admit, and that was the truth I needed to remember.
That was when I decided there wouldn’t be another night. I might be stupid once, but not twice. I would tell him that today, the moment rehearsal was over. I got out of bed. I went to the basin and poured lukewarm water into it and plunged my whole face in.
Chapter Nineteen
Geneva
I dreamed that night about my lunch with Sebastian DeWitt. That lunch, which had lasted longer than an hour, moving into two, had been filled with laughter and talk and a little more wine than had been wise. It had made me forget Nathan’s betrayal for a while. Though there had been people in the restaurant I recognized, I’d made no attempt to quiet my laughter. I’d felt them watching us, and I knew that Sebastian DeWitt was right when he’d said there would be talk. But I no longer cared, not for Nathan’s sake or my own. When I’d arrived home to Nathan’s note that he wouldn’t be home for dinner, I was glad.
That next morning, I deliberately kept from thinking about Beatrice Wilkes and her relationships with both Sebastian DeWitt and my husband. But at least I had managed things so that I would not have to see her, and that was some consolation. I had no idea whether or not Nathan would be angry at what I’d done in removing her from Penelope, and I tried not to think of the consequences of that, nor about the fact that it looked increasingly as if, despite my hopes, neither Seattle nor my good behavior could return my marriage to what it had been.
I had just finished breakfast when Bonnie came in. “Pardon me, ma’am, but it’s Thursday.”
I glanced up at her blankly. “Yes?”
“Tonight is my night off, ma’am.”
“Yes, of course.”
She hovered, shoving her hands in the pockets of her apron. “Well, ma’am, Mr. Langley usually leaves me my weekly pay in the kitchen, and it ain’t there.”
“I’m certain he’ll provide it later.”
Hesitation, a slight flush. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I can’t wait. He won’t be back until after I’m gone, and I was to go to a dance tonight, and—”
I held up my hand to stop her. “There’s no need to tell me. Very well, I’ll get it for you.”
A quick curtsey, a smile of relief. “Thank you so much, ma’am.”
I rose with a sigh and made my way down the hall to Nathan’s study, where he kept the safe with money for the household accounts. The room smelled of him, of cigar smoke and the verbena of his custom-made shaving soap, and I felt a twinge of both anger and despair, which I pushed aside as I went to the cigar stand by one of the leather upholstered chairs at the fireplace. I flipped the latch, taking out the box of cigars, feeling along the bottom for the safe key.
There it was. I picked it up and put the cigars back. At the other end of the room was Nathan’s large mahogany desk, littered with papers. Behind it were bookcases, one full shelf of ledgers. The safe was there, below the ledgers, but Nathan’s chair was blocking it, and as I moved it, the key slipped from my hand, bouncing on the desk and falling into the partially opened, long, top drawer.
The drawer held Nathan’s letterhead, creamy white, his monogram in swirled black at the very top, envelopes, and the key was not immediately evident. It must have fallen beneath them. I pushed the stationery aside to get at it.
And I saw the newspaper article.
I would not have noted it except for two things: first, it was cut neatly from the paper, which would not have been so odd if not for the second thing, which was the fact that it was the society column from the Post-Intelligencer, and part of it had been underlined in ink, with a handwritten exclamation point scrawled in the margin beside.
I picked it up. The column was from two days ago, I saw, and the item that had been underlined said:
What notorious matron has been seen sharing smiles (and more?) with the Regal Theater’s newest resident playwright? Little birds have spotted the two of them huddling together in the most unsavory locales, and lately they seem thick as thieves. These sightings, along with Mrs. L’s latest foray into treading the boards, have all of society in an uproar, and many of our city’s finest have declared her beyond hope or help. Dear Readers, can we be far wrong in anticipating another Andromeda—but this time writ in ink rather than stone?
I stared at it in dismay. Nathan had said not a word of it to me, yet he’d found it noteworthy enough to cut it out. To underline it. To set an exclamation point beside it.
I puzzled over it for a moment, and set it back where I had found it, pulling a sheet of letterhead to half hide it as it had been before, and as I did so, I revealed another sheet, handwriting I recognized, and I paused, arrested by the sight of my father’s fancily looped G. Gen—
I pushed it to reveal the rest. Geneva.
Frowning, I pulled the letter loose.
My dear Nathan,
Regarding operations for Stratford & Brown, you must know that I agree with you and trust your decisions in all aspects. Please proceed as discussed.
As for Geneva … this is what I have feared for some time. As you say, it would have been best to insist on Bloomfield Estates in November, and I am sorry now I did not, and more sorry than I can say that you are now left to deal with the results of this lamentable decision. I think we had both hoped for so much better. From her letters to me, I know the removal to Seattle has seemingly made things worse. I am appalled at her most recent fancy, and her grandmother is beside herself at the thought of Geneva on a stage! And this relationship with the playwright, and how you say he has replaced Marat in her imaginings … I am beyond concerned. I would board the next train if I weren’t in the middle of such delicate negotiations.
I laud you for your patience in such trying circumstances. Your letter regarding the doctor’s findings was most revelatory. If he thinks she may go further into delusion if she is not checked, then there is no reason to hesitate.
It is long past time for us to do what must be done. I worry about her health most of all, and I will not contest your decision to have her committed, and in fact will aid you in any way I can.
You must let me know what the second doctor says, and if you feel the local asylum will house her appropriately. I understand your desire to have her housed in an institution near enough that you can see she is getting the proper treatment, and I defer to your judgment. Money is, of course, no concern; all of my financial resources are at your disposal. I have also immediately transferred Geneva’s accounts to your control.
Your father-in-law,
Maynard Stratford
I could only stare at the letter, at my father’s handwriting. I will not contest your decision to have
her committed.… I have also immediately transferred Geneva’s accounts to your control.… It was impossible. I could not be reading it correctly. But reading it again revealed no mistake, and my hands were trembling when I was done. They could not mean to do this. Not to me. I didn’t understand—this talk about the theater, about Sebastian DeWitt—hadn’t Nathan and I agreed to those things? Hadn’t he urged me to them?
Then, suddenly, it all fell into place. Nathan’s willingness to put Sebastian DeWitt in my path. The quickness with which my husband had acquiesced to my acting on the Regal’s stage. The doctor’s visit for an inconsequential cough.
I glanced again at the society piece, underlined for my father’s benefit. I understood now, and saw how perfectly I’d played into their hands. How every single thing I’d done since I arrived in this town had done so.
An asylum. And I knew that once I was there, they would never let me out. Nathan would have control of my trust. Seattle society already loved him—I had seen that for myself, and the visit of Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Porter only confirmed it. They would fall over themselves in sympathy. The political career he wanted would be his for the taking. I would be out of the way, and my father would still love him.
I felt I would be sick. It was all I could do to put things back the way I’d found them, to close the drawer again, to put the key away, to go into the hallway. Bonnie was standing at the doorway to the parlor. She frowned when she saw me, saying, “Are you all right, ma’am?”
And I remembered why I’d been in the study to begin with. “I’m sorry, Bonnie,” I managed. “I could not find the key. You’ll have to wait for Mr. Langley after all.” And then I went past her and up the stairs, one at a time, feeling as if I moved in a daze, to my bedroom.
Once inside, I closed the door and leaned against it. I could not think; I could hardly move. I felt my father’s betrayal and my husband’s malice like a poison. And there was no denying my own stupidity. I’d forgotten how completely Nathan had fooled me once before. I had been too willing to ignore my suspicions, so determined to restore my marriage that I hadn’t remembered what a lie it had been to begin with. I thought of the night of the exhibition, how quickly Nathan had brought up Bloomfield Estates, as if he and my father had been considering it for some time, and I was afraid. How well I’d forgotten the choice I’d been given in Chicago, how foolish not to realize that they had never put it aside.