by Black Silk
“It’s beautiful weather,” she said. “I’ve never seen such a summer as this.”
He agreed.
“Look up there. In the eaves over my room.” He looked where she pointed, not at the eaves but at the window of her room. It would be up the stairs inside, then all the way to the back. “Swallows, I thought—their tails are split—but now I’m not sure. I’m terrible with species.”
He smiled. “Other people’s categories simply do not interest you, do they?” When she looked at him, a little puzzled, he answered, “A swift. The bird up there is a swift, which is unusual. They generally travel in great screaming packs.”
The bird took off. They watched it fly out of sight. No need to make further conversation. Then he did something unlikely. He threw his coat over the line, rolled back his sleeves, and pinned up a pillow casing himself. Watching, she laughed.
“How very”—she couldn’t find the word for a moment, then settled on—“common of you.” It was a gibe, but also a compliment. He could take being called common by her and knew there were good things to being labeled so.
“Once,” he said, “after the pictures, the pillory, the whole thing, after I was home on Henry’s hands, I couldn’t sleep one night. Henry was up, in the front portico, seeing a friend out. We were at war by then, Henry and I. Horrible. Both suppurating wounded for having torn into each other too many times. I’m not sure if I got up to fire off more cannon or to effect some midnight truce. But I could hear the friend leaving and wanted simply to face Henry again. When I got near the door, I heard them talking. Henry said, ‘I can’t help feeling there is no hope. He won’t come into line.’ He sighed a huge sigh then added, ‘To do something so vulgar, so common. I shall never be able to get over it. I am so ashamed of him.’”
Graham paused, caught suddenly by the oddity of his telling her yet more, dwelling on his old problems, while he tried to minimize the accidental mention of a subject—a person—never too far from their conversational reach: and never within their agreement. “What I did was not very genteel, of course. But…” He let the thought trail off. There was nowhere to go with it. The memory wasn’t flattering; not for Henry, even less for himself. Its only significance was that it marked the final realization that the approval and affection he had always imagined he could win were not forthcoming: destinations on Henry’s map he would never reach.
Submit held a clothes peg over the folded edge of a shift, then wedged it down. “Under the circumstances,” she said, “one would expect him to feel let down. People say things.”
“That wasn’t it. He made a third person party to his worst feelings toward me. My dirty linen.” He smiled at the parallel, her clean wash in the sun, then looked at the ground.
“Yes,” she agreed finally, “it wasn’t very good of him.” But her voice withheld judgment. For all concerned.
“You really must come to Netham,” he found himself saying. “You would like it. If only for a holiday.”
This won him only a funny smile, as if her taking a holiday at Netham were the silliest notion she had ever heard. But she thanked him. And bowed out: “I am closer to London here.”
There was nothing more to say. They were at the end of an empty laundry basket, the conversation.
He carried her things in for her, his arm brushing against her breast for one tantalizing moment as he reached ahead to open the door. They came into the common room, the strange gaping dining hall of the posting house, full of its ready, empty tables. Graham set the basket down on one of these, then looked up to find Submit staring at him. She was frowning slightly as she did up the buttons at her neckline, where they ran from her collarbone by quarter inches up the full length of her throat. Graham began unrolling his own sleeves, thinking he might offer to help with the buttons as he had helped with the wash. He could imagine her raising her chin, allowing him access, while he worked at the slow, meticulous task of the tiny fastens.
He titillated himself with the thought as he watched her own fingers do the job. She patted the collar in place, then began at the run of buttons down her left arm. The two of them stood there, buttoning, unrolling, putting aright, quietly fixing their clothes as in the strange transitional silence of postcoitus.
“Well, thank you again,” she said. Her coordination wasn’t as good with her left hand. At her right sleeve, she had hold of a button, then lost the edge of the cuff. She had to start over, bringing the two pieces together awkwardly with the one hand.
“Here, may I?”
She contemplated his offer. Then, drawing a slow, even breath, she extended her arm.
He gripped the back of it firmly, beginning at the buttons with his other hand. He could feel a tension in her, a kind of reluctant willingness at her elbow and in her wrist. Under the tips of his fingers, the inside of her forearm felt cool, as smooth as the skin of a peach. He stared down, presumably to watch what he was doing. But in fact he was almost blinded by the simple enterprise. He could feel her pulse beating through her arm, beneath his hand. His own heart began to thud. He wanted to bring her arm up around his neck, bend his nose to it, feel the skin against his mouth, breathe in its smell, kiss it, lick it, bite it—
The sleeve flapped loose as he slid his hand up her arm, inside her sleeve to the bend of her elbow. He fit his hand flush into this bend—it was damp. He pulled her toward him. His mouth came against hers just in time for her lips, warm and dry, to brush his as she turned her face away.
“No.”
He was left with her cheek, the edge of her hairline. Against his mouth, she was velvety, covered in pale, fine hair, a peachlike down. She pushed him back.
“Why ‘no’?” he asked.
She took his hand out of her sleeve and began to fumble at the buttons herself, leaning back against a table. She threw him a nervous half-smile. “That is strictly the response of a man who has not accepted ‘no.’”
“Why?” he repeated.
“I don’t owe you explanations.” The rebuke was quiet, final.
He had to work at making himself smile. “I think, after hanging laundry together all morning, you do.”
“You wouldn’t like it.”
“I don’t much like not being allowed to kiss you.”
She sent up a plea, a serious glance, but made not the first offer to explain. She was having no better luck with the sleeve on the second try. He took hold of her wrist. She tried to jerk it back.
“Be still. I’m only going to do the buttons.”
In the most businesslike fashion he could, he pulled a chair around and put his foot on it. He laid her elbow on his knee. She balked when he stretched her arm out, laying it up his thigh, then warily allowed him to begin the tight, cinching motion of pressing buttons into loops.
A full minute later, he was only halfway done. They stood among the tables in this awkward, protracted silence; fastening, fastening. There were twenty-three buttons down her arm; he’d counted them twice. Then Graham saw, in his peripheral sight, an odd, unexplained motion. Submit bent her head slightly, bringing the back of her other hand to her mouth. He paused, reached up and took the hand away. And there it was: a faint smile. She tried to turn her head so he couldn’t see, but there was nowhere to hide. He held both her arms, with only the mildest resistance. For several seconds, she tried to look at him but couldn’t meet his eye. She fought her own odd, smiling expression as it broke over her face. Then shyly, self-consciously—beautifully, seductively—embarrassed, she bowed her head.
Graham was completely at sea. The bent posture, along with the feminine smiling and hiding, put such a contradiction to what had gone before that his mouth went dry. It was as if she were saying to pay no mind to any protests and…
As a way of undercutting it, she quickly owned up to her apparent ambivalence. “No matter what you’re reading from me in one way, never think I don’t have a strong sense of what is right. For me.” She withdrew her arms. “I like you.” She raised a brow, putting a de
mur—a disjunctive but—into her smile. “I won’t tangle with you. Not in that way.” In a softer tone, she added, “Still, thank you. You’ve no idea what self-justification you’ve just given me. To be able to tell myself the choice really did exist, not just sour grapes.”
“That doesn’t leave much for me, does it?”
“Don’t be offended. No one is completely irresistible.”
That subdued him. And incensed him.
“Don’t,” she said again, meaning he mustn’t be angry.
“It’s not you caught with your pants down.”
“For pity’s sake—”
“I’ll get my hat.”
He started to move past her, but she was closer to the hat. It hung at a jaunty angle on top of the newel post at the base of the stairs.
Submit wove her way between tables, straight to it, lifting it free. It seemed a bad joke to her suddenly, the familiarity of her knowing immediately where he would put his hat: on her stair post. Then she picked up his gloves from the crevice between post and banister. Without waiting, she walked toward the stone parlor beyond the entryway, toward the stables.
They went through the parlor. He held the door, his expression a rigid mask of indignation. She tried to ignore his anger; there was nothing she could do about it. Meanwhile, as she stepped down into the tack room, she became aware of the weight of her skirts, of the knot where it was tied in back. The knotted fabric bobbed over her buttocks, sliding and shifting no matter how straight she carried herself. Graham reached to hold back the clutter of straps, and Submit acutely regretted her lack of hoops. They usually kept him, kept anyone, at more of a distance. Now, at every doorway, at every pause in their progression, he was close enough that his legs brushed up against the bulkily tied skirts.
At the archway to the stables, he wouldn’t take his hat. He went down the last three steps in a pique.
Then, right there before her, he suddenly turned and looked up. “Why? You damn well want to—”
She blinked. “I want to do a lot of things,” she replied, “but I’m not willing to pay the price.” She stepped down the last step, again offering his hat.
This time he took it as he said, “All right. I understand not liking others’ disapproval—”
“It’s not that. I wouldn’t approve.”
“If you want to do something, you simply give yourself permission.”
“Like dirty pictures?”
He was taken aback. “Exactly like dirty pictures.”
“My dear earl.” She gave him a look of pure, indulgent forbearance. “I might like to live off cake, but I don’t. It’s not good for me. I wouldn’t have done the pictures, no matter how much the idea appealed to me: They made you feel terrible.”
“They made me feel wonderful, you idiot. I bloody loved doing them.” His horse, tied to a ring on the wall, shied at the sound of his raised voice.
“Then hated yourself for them later on.”
“I didn’t—” She looked at him levelly. “All right,” he said, “I did regret them a little. But only because—” His face drew into a frown that drew into deeper furrows, almost a grimace of pain. “Because,” he said soberly, “Henry hated me for them. They became to him the final proof that everything I ever did was wrong.”
“Oh, dear.” Some of Submit’s irritation abated, as she realized, whether Graham did or not, that he was speaking of how important Henry had been to him. In a much gentler voice, she put this into words: “You wanted Henry’s respect.”
“Well, yes.” He gave her a funny look. “Just a little would have been nice.”
“Surely Henry gave it to you for other things.”
“No, madam, he didn’t.” He turned away, going over to untie the horse.
“He came to you when you were sick.”
“That’s not the same thing as respect.”
“It’s not the same thing as approval. But it was a way of acknowledging that he cared: I think Henry was sorry he couldn’t approve of you.”
He turned his back completely, adjusting the stirrup. “Bloody big of him.” He put his foot in the tread, about to swing up.
“Graham—” It made her warm to hear his given name aloud out her own mouth, but she suddenly needed it, wanted it.
From his awkward position, he looked around.
“I thought about what you said the other day.” She genuinely wanted to offer him something. “You were at least partially right. Henry hated anything that reminded him of his own follies. He liked to believe he was perfect. It annoyed him no end when he remembered he had fathered a dull-witted bastard. Or—” She hesitated, then said, “That he had a strong attraction for a young girl he was afraid he wasn’t perfect enough—handsome enough, young enough—to keep. Henry hated his own passion. It frightened him.”
For a moment, Graham just stared at her, holding the reins, one hand on the saddle’s pommel, his knee in the air. Then he slowly turned around again, putting his foot back on the ground. He steadied the horse, patting it.
“Why does it frighten you?” he asked.
“Why does what frighten me?”
“Passion.” The horse sidestepped nervously.
She laughed. “It doesn’t,” she said finally. “I’ve shared passion, I told you, with Henry.”
“With a man who was afraid of it?”
Submit blinked, frowned, then let out a breath. “You must get it through your head, Graham”—she used the name now like a prim, lecturing nanny—“that I loved my husband and that I—I made his bed mine quite happily. Don’t confuse that with the fact that I don’t want to play flirting, kissing games with you. I’m not available to any man who happens to trouble himself to ride out and ask.”
“Have other men asked?”
A burst of laughter escaped, disbelief. “Yes,” she said. With a show of scholarly patience, “Other men have asked.”
“And?”
“I’ve said no, just as I’m saying to you.”
“You have never even kissed another man?”
She narrowed her eyes. “This is really none of your business.”
“Then you have.”
“No, I have not.”
And this answer, quite surprisingly, seemed to provoke him more than if she had.
“Do you mean to tell me”—he leaned toward her with a kind of furious wonder—“you have never even kissed another man, no one but that nasty old curmudge—”
“Lord Netham.” She held her ground, facing him nose to nose. “Irrespective of my dealing with that nasty old curmudgeon, the answer is no.”
He spoke directly into her face. “Lady Motmarche, I’m not a complete idiot: Irrespective of that nasty old curmudgeon, that smile a minute ago told me you wanted it kissed right off your face, wanted me to kiss you till your knees buckled and your drawers dropped around your ankles.” He turned and threw the reins again over the horse.
Anger let loose in Submit, rich and hot. It flooded her veins. “That’s a lie. A crudely put, self-deceiving lie.”
He looked over his shoulder as he put his foot in the stirrup again. “I can get cruder—”
“Yes, I’ve seen what you consider art—”
“And I can be a lot more honest: You are a self-righteous, arrogant prude who only knows how to fuck a man with her mind. No wonder you and Henry got on so well.”
He leaped onto his horse before she could speak. The horse wheeled around with surprising spirit. Dust churned. Bits of hay and dry grass flew. Submit backed up.
But she didn’t back down. “Lord Netham,” she called.
He brought the animal around, prancing in side steps. The horse whinnied and snorted at its short rein.
With perfect, quiet, malicious intent, Submit homed in on a little truth she was sure Graham Wessit would prefer not to see: “Would you be trying to seduce me if Henry were alive?”
He stared down, holding the animal in place. “Possibly,” Graham answered.
�
�What if he were standing here right now? Would you want to—what was that word you used? I’ve never heard it, but I take it it’s crude. Would you want to”—she marched bravely, cogently into this new word—“fuck me if Henry were standing here right now?”
Graham drew in a breath through his nostrils and scowled. “Definitely.”
“Which is my point. You don’t want to make love to me—as Henry did so very nicely, I might mention. You want to cuckold Henry Channing-Downes.” Submit thought she had tied all this up for him rather neatly.
But he laughed. “You’re bloody right, I would like to have cuckolded Henry. But Henry, my dear, is dead—”
“Not in your mind, he’s not.”
“No, it’s in your mind he’s alive. You’re still trying to be faithful to a nasty son of a bitch who’s six feet under the ground. And you can be for all I care—” The horse suddenly reared. Without a moment’s hesitation, Graham leaned up on its neck, bringing it crashing to the ground. He spun the animal around, putting it right where he wanted it again, facing her. “The two of you are perfect for each other,” he said. “A childish necromantic married to dead man who used children. Congratulations, you have found what I’ve been looking for all my adult life: a perfect match.”
Chapter 24
Back, back, wild throbbing heart!…back, back hot blood! painting tales that should never be told on the blushing cheek.
Mrs. Stephen’s Illustrated New Monthly
“Nellie’s Illusions,” page 35
Philadelphia, July 1856
Netham, 27 August
My dear Cousin,
I beg your forgiveness for my reprehensible conduct last week. I was furious, of course, but I was infinitely more regretful than furious by the time I got home. I could barely credit what I had said to you. I humbly apologize. I blame the sun, my generally intemperate nature, and my long-standing inclination to challenge even the most angelic patience. I add, for the sake of soliciting your mercy, the idea that our last meeting might have represented a kind of final snap of relief for me over what has been, thus far, a truly difficult spring and summer. As for the words I chose to use in expressing my incredibly obnoxious thoughts, I hope you will forgive a man who, though born and bred into the life of a gentleman, spent an unfortunate number of impressionable months on the streets about Leicester Square. The theater district is no place to learn civil conduct. Not that that particular lesson has ever come very easily to me. I heartily promise, if you will be so kind as to excuse my outrageous behavior, I shall forever after remain a gentleman in your presence.