Judith Ivory

by Black Silk

  With unmincing success, Graham finished off the other man’s serve. He could contemplate losing, to save himself sweat, embarrassment, bruises, exhaustion; but he couldn’t actually submit to this simple expedient in practice.

  It was just as Graham lost the serve again that Rosalyn made her reentrance, like a grand actress able to recover from a bad false start. She came across the lawn alone, in a blue hooded wrap that set off her hair like stamen in the throat of some exotic flower. Beyond her, her carriage was pulling into the carriage house. She called, “Graham!” and waved. Graham raised his racket in response. He was glad to see her returned to her old self—dependably, wholesomely gorgeous and free of a husband’s restraint.

  The lieutenant-captain stared openly.

  “Deuce,” was the call again.

  Graham stepped into a shot traveling toward him so fast it could have been fired from a gun.

  It was a short volley, ending when Graham returned a ball that the younger Moffet had simply been unprepared to see come back over his side of the net. The young man sputtered, for he had already begun to walk to the edge of the serve line, ready to secure his victory. When he returned to position, he was red in the face. He lost the next shot by embracing precisely his opponent’s worst flaw: He drove at the ball with too much force, sending it well over Graham’s head to land twenty feet outside the court.

  “Advantage Netham.”

  Then came a stroke of luck. When Graham served, he tried putting a little spin on the ball, as he would in billiards, and the damned notion worked in an erratic sort of way. The ball jumped almost backward when it hit, beyond returning.

  “Game point to the earl of Netham.”

  Graham glanced at Tilney. Rosalyn let her wrap fall to the ground, revealing an equally sumptuous display of color, the bright orange-pink of a sunset. She walked onto the playing area. “Can the ladies have a try?”

  Graham shook his head, meeting her halfway to the sidelines. “Not with me.” He tossed his racket down.

  Tilney sputtered something about this being only the first game of a set. Rosalyn never took her eyes off Graham, smiling, beaming. As she linked her arm in his, she said very quietly, as if their first reunion several days before had never taken place, “Hello.” Then quieter still, “You look smashing.”

  “Better than smashed, I suppose.”

  She kissed his cheek. “You’re wet,” she said with surprise.

  “I’m exhausted. I have been the most incredible fool—”

  A voice broke in. “He’s bloody well won at everything. Someone ought to teach him that it isn’t very hospitable for the host to always win.” It was not Tilney but, good-naturedly, John Carmichael who spoke. Tilney, however, seconded this with a hostile and sincere grunt.

  Together Rosalyn and Graham settled back onto the sidelines, where people took turns recounting Graham’s “foolishness” during the past few days. Rosalyn proved the perfect audience. The steeplechase, instead of the act of bruising bravado that it was, became a main event, a heroic victory. At cards, Graham became sly and commanding, the winner of untold fortune. At tennis, he was already deemed the champion. The stories were meant to flatter. They had flattered once, he thought; they must have. But now they seemed embarrassing, transparent. Yet no one seemed to suspect Graham’s discomfort with any of it.

  Then, worse, Rosalyn brought something out for all to see: “Look,” she said, holding up a little blue book. “Number twelve of The Rake of Ronmoor!”

  Graham inwardly cringed as most of the ladies crowded around. They teased and cooed, every last one of them speaking with knowledge and enthusiasm for the stupid little serial. Even some of the men made arch, winking remarks, drawing parallels that were unfortunately there to make. The Rake was an energetic Thackeray-like antihero who loved to woo and win.

  Graham grew quiet. In the shadow of Rosalyn’s parasol, he tried to imagine a way to fail, a way people couldn’t rewrite. He planned how to lose. Though surely he had lost at one time or another. And weren’t his losses just as eagerly transformed into melodrama?

  He changed his mind. He planned nothing, not winning, not losing, not doing anything the least bit noteworthy. He planned how to be unwritten, how to be seen—and liked?—as an ordinary man. Yet the most ordinary things about him, he worried, sometimes took on significance in other people’s minds. He gave up. He couldn’t imagine how he could control any of this. The important thing was, he told himself, there were at least a few individuals who knew and liked him for himself, in his human, unfictionalized form. At this comforting notion, he looked to Rosalyn, then like a traitor his mind suddenly yielded up a different name. Submit. And he abandoned his pointless, unfollowable train of thought.

  Two ladies took to the court, though they kept score not of points against each other but of the number of volleys they could keep the ball in the air. Eleven, twelve, thirteen; then squeals of disappointment.

  People milled about. Many came to greet Rosalyn. She knew a surprising number of his friends by name—some from London, some from a quick study from the first days when she had been quasihostess at Netham before he’d arrived. The young Moffet came to sit near. He hovered. (“The neckbreather,” Rosalyn would dub him later, for he would become a fixture of the summer, working his way to stand near her or sit beside her, until she became claustrophobic in the shadow of his unwanted attentions.) So that day, another first, Graham put a protective—possessive—arm over the back of Rosalyn’s chair as they watched the games, stroking her shoulder with his thumb now and then.

  Rosalyn’s bosom rose and fell through all this. The stories and his friends somehow primed her. With nary a complaint, he would be allowed later, he was sure, to mess up her careful hair, her perfect dress. He counted on doing so, in fact, as an appetizer, before dinner. Dinner itself would be a feast. A hot, rich meal of lamb and mint and puddings topped off with a bottle of old, crusty port. He called himself lucky and planned a geometric multiplication of his blessings and winnings. He became bold and lingered with her after the others went in to change. He kissed her on the open mouth, and she let him, in plain view of anyone who might turn. Like an adolescent.

  No one did. His life felt charmed. All was well with the world, everything in its place.

  The only discordant note was when Rosalyn, lying in bed that night, asked about the orphaned twins. He had left them in a London hospital in the care of doctors; they were weak, fragile little things, it turned out. Nature, it seemed, might finally accomplish what the English legal system had done nothing but ball up; the babies’ poor health might soon make irrelevant all arguments over guardianship. Rosalyn responded sympathetically. She already knew of the ordeal of their mother’s death, the accusations against him, and of the rescue at the hands of Submit Channing-Downes. As he spoke in the dark, Rosalyn accepted everything as he laid it out. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. How awful for you. Poor darling. The only thing he omitted was the last sight he’d had of Submit and how the memory of it continued to disturb him: those unexplained tears. He could speak almost guiltlessly of the visit to her, “to get the box she’d walked off with.” But a sensation stayed with him. It was not precisely guilt—though he knew he intended to visit Submit again and that Rosalyn would look askance at repeated rendezvous at a country inn. All the same, he felt these visits were innocent, even in some way very healthy, though he could not have explained why to her or even to himself.

  Chapter 21

  The first two or three times, Submit managed to dispatch Graham Wessit without much fuss. He came to thank her for her help at Whitehall. “It was only my duty; no thanks required.” He came on his way home from London to see how she was getting along. “Fine. I am managing quite well.” He behaved, was polite, and almost lulled her into believing he was what he seemed, a slightly fancified gentleman with ideas respectfully different from her own, who was sorely put-upon by a history of very wild oats, rumor, and jealous gossip.

  She came home one m
orning from the little village nearby, however, to find him at the inn much earlier than he had ever arrived before. She walked into the common room, removing her hat, and found him sitting at a far table with Mr. Hanlon, the innkeeper, drinking coffee and Irish whiskey.

  The innkeeper had the good grace to scramble away, trying to minimize their early morning tippling by taking the bottle with him. But Graham Wessit wasn’t the least apologetic. He rose and began as if he could give whiskey, at ten in the morning, an historical perspective. “Mr. Hanlon has been explaining that this inn was first a tavern built in 1698.” He smiled. His words were clear. He seemed steady enough.

  Submit looked at him across several tables, as she played with the pleats where her veil was tacked to her hat. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  He registered her abrupt tone and looked down at his cup, then back. “I needed to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  He smiled quickly, the reflex of a man used to getting by on his looks. The smile dazzled. It was annoying to see this little trick performed so well. His perfect white teeth set off his dark, sharply planed face. “I was hoping we might go for a walk,” he said.

  “I’m tired. I’ve just walked to the village and back.”

  His expression was one of genuine disappointment, making her feel somehow needlessly mean. What was he doing here, without the flimsiest excuse? Despite herself, she noticed the dark shadows around his eyes, deeper than usual. Another trick, she supposed. This man, who led the most undemanding and restful of lives, had eyes that always looked as if he’d been up all night.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No.” The smile pulled tightly back. Inch-long slashes—extravagant dimples—cut into his cheeks. “I suppose not.”

  “Fine. I’m sorry, I have things to do today.” She began toward the stairs.

  “It wouldn’t take long.”

  She paused to see him take out a watch, one of six or seven, from the pocket of a dark, nacreous-bronze vest. She frowned. He looked up from the open watch. “Ten-fifteen. You can kick me out at ten-thirty.”

  She really had to discourage this. “I’m sorry—”

  He suddenly unthreaded the watch from the buttonhole of his vest. Glancing up, he asked, “Which ones offend you most?”

  “I’m not offended by your watches.” But he continued unlooping the chains, making her feel petty.

  One at a time, he set each of his watches on the table. Submit scowled at this performance but didn’t look away. Then he began on his rings. All five came off, to lie in a heap like a pirate’s treasure in the middle of the linen tablecloth, a small, sparkling pile implying that she didn’t know how to see him beyond it.

  He held out his bare hands. She couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or faintly ironic. “What else am I doing wrong?” He looked down at himself, then back up. “Honestly, I need a friend to talk to, and for the life of me I can’t think of anyone else who might understand.”

  Submit felt a warmth creep into her cheeks she couldn’t control. All right, she would give him fifteen minutes. “If you’ll wait,” she conceded, “I’ll be right back down.”

  He called to her, “Wear your hat.”

  “What?” She looked down from the landing.

  “Your straw hat with the red ribbon.” After a moment he added, “To protect you from the sun.”

  To protect her from the sun, indeed. She pointedly bypassed the hat upstairs in her room, muttering to herself. Whiskey at ten in the morning. Never mind the watches and rings. Dragging her to London to save him from hanging. Thanking her by lending William his flat. Then showing up repeatedly, as if nothing were wrong, calling her his friend. What exactly did he expect?

  She was more irritated still when Graham Wessit wasn’t in the eating common when she came back down. The innkeeper pointed through the entranceway to the other side of the building. “Went to check on his horse.”

  She could hear a horse stomping and snorting far off as she passed through an empty parlor. The parlor, an addition built of stone, led through to the carriage quarters, all built of brick. The old inn was a rambling congeries of styles and materials from over two centuries of rebuilding and repair. The carriage quarters took up more than half the building, their predominance coming from the days before trains charted the popular routes, when travelers stopped in fine, private carriages drawn by six or eight horses. Submit entered the tack room. It was filled with dried-out bridles, halters, stirrups, and cross-ties; it smelled of animals, old leather, old sweat, old straw. She ducked under a curtain of straps that hung over a low beam. Just as she did, Graham Wessit came in from the opposite direction, through a wide brick arch. She backed into the straps. They jangled and flapped.

  Graham Wessit too was caught off guard. On the straw-strewn cobbles, his shoes gritted to a stop. After a moment, he threw an arm, a casually pointed finger in the direction of the carriage house and stable behind. “A rabbit,” he said. “It got into the stall.”

  She stared at him. “So what is it,” she asked finally, “that you wanted to talk about?”

  He looked around. “Wouldn’t you rather go outside?”

  “No.”

  Frowning, he tapped his fingers for a moment on the only furnishing in the relatively bare room—a frayed saddle on a wood saddle rack. He considered her a moment, then capitulated, straddling the saddle rack and sitting on it. He brought one foot up to rest across the front of the saddle. Submit found herself staring at the sole of his boot, its dark, dirty-brown color contrasting sharply with the light cream of his pants. His trouser inseam pulled without making so much as a crease over his cocked hip. She looked up to his face.

  He continued to study her. “Why,” he asked as he crossed his arms over his chest, “are you so inhospitable? I don’t deserve it.” He squinted, then suggested, “If you’re afraid I’ll try and throw you to the ground, I assure you I’d hardly be so stupid.” He made a wry smile. “At least, not twice.”

  Submit moved a bridle out of her way. Its solidness under her hand felt suddenly reassuring. She hung on to it. “Is this what you wanted to talk about? Throwing me to the ground?”

  “No.” He laughed in surprise—in almost self-rebuke. “No, with you I’m sure I won’t get into trouble there.”

  She frowned, not entirely sure she was flattered by the remark. “So are you in trouble somewhere else?” She couldn’t resist adding, “In need of another alibi?”

  “No. And I didn’t do anything last time. Not in London and not out in the field.” He angled his head, as if trying to decide whether to take offense or not. “Look, I don’t know what to say about all that. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t want you to have to come to London to defend me. I didn’t want to expose you to the sort of prying that, by the way, I have known all my life. But you’re perfectly safe now—”

  “Am I?” She let her hands slide off the bridles and ties and put her fists on her waist. “Safely pinned here? So you can come calling whenever you like?”

  “What?”

  “If it weren’t for you, I might be home right now—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She took a step closer. “William. On top of everything else, you gave him your flat. How could you? He wants Motmarche!”

  He blinked, a little startled, but answered calmly enough. “I should imagine he does.”

  She walked right up to him until her hoops pushed against the saddle rack. “It’s my home.”

  “He was raised there.” He leaned involuntarily back.

  Submit let out a breath. “Are you telling me you think he should have it?”

  He paused. “I suppose I am.” He spoke much more evenly than she. “It’s his father’s house.”

  Submit could hear the sound of her own voice, emotional, irrationally upset. “It’s my house, my home! I lived there for twelve years. Henry left it to me!”

  “Henry did a lot of stupid things�
��one of which was, at the time of his death, to horribly slight his son. A son, I might add, who lived at Motmarche probably more years than you are old, who married and moved out to accommodate Henry and his new bride, and who in return was generally insulted or sloughed off.” He looked at her sincerely. “I think it’s abominable. There weren’t even nominal compensations in the will. I don’t blame William for trying to salvage his pride.”

  Submit couldn’t speak for several long seconds. All she could finally get out was William—William is an idiot.”

  “Ah,” he said with a nod. “And idiots shouldn’t enjoy a father’s love.”

  She turned away. Her heart was pumping madly in her chest. Her skin felt hot. She pushed her fingers back through the side of her hair as if a piece had come undone, but it was fine. For whatever reason, Graham Wessit had taken his cousin’s side. She didn’t need to talk to a man who listened seriously to what William Channing-Downes had to say.

  She turned to leave, but something caught her skirts and pulled.

  “Turn around,” the man behind her said in the soft, unequivocal way that one might speak to a misguided child.

  Her skirts were pulled back, all the way up against her legs. She looked down and around. The hem of her dress lay draped over the flexed ankle of Graham Wessit’s boot, a foot off the ground. He’d put his foot under her dress and hooked it onto a hoop to hold her in place.

  She gave her dress a jerk, but that snagged the fabric into something that caught more firmly.

  “You’re going to rip it,” he said, bending over and down.

  He unhooked the thin fabric from a small, sharp little spike—apparently Graham Wessit rode with a spur. As he rose back up, however, he kept hold of her dress. He settled forward to cross his arms and lean onto the head of the saddle, holding a fistful of black silk. He looked at her, at eye level now.