by Baird Wells
She treated him to a smile and ducked her head. “At the risk of bad manners, it is. Both.”
He grinned. “Don’t suppose you need a hand?”
“Your offer is kind,” she teased, “but a single woman can, in fact, manage a stud farm.”
His grin broadened, and he winked. “I wasn’t referring to the farm.”
He laughed, she laughed, and the rest gasped or grumbled. A tight-smiling Lady Alice craned her head at each guest and screeched that Americans were always such fun. ‘Fun’, of course, meaning obnoxious and a little worrisome, with the same odds as a circus tiger of turning positively wild.
Lady Anne MacAuley flanked Hannah to the left, draped in widow’s weeds four years on, their black making her a silhouette in the lamplight. Hannah suspected the display of mourning was less a show of sorrow and more a reminder to everyone of a wide and permanent separation between Lord Rand and his wife. Lady Anne was a Cavendish, somewhere down the branches of her family tree near its trunk, the acorn of an old and powerful British line. Half of the woman’s idle remarks were reminders that she had remained the very English wife of a Scottish lord and was never subverted by his rough culture, testimonial to her national loyalty. Lord Rand had bought forgiveness for his ancestry, since his passing, by leaving behind a pile of money, reparations to Lady Anne so that she might restore her shaded character a gown or a jewel at a time. Anne, by birdlike cocks of her snowy head and twitches of her body, seemed constantly surveying the table to gauge her success.
Duc Henri de Beringar held the foot of the table, straining under questions and scrutiny with the same attitude as Atlas holding up the world. French nobility had been the thing in London for nearly a hundred years, British sympathy for their plight and a terror of sharing their fate burying a thousand years of contentious diplomacy. And having a French person of any decent standing lent their host the same prestige as having presented a trained bear or a merengued Roman punch. The men dressed like silk tramps, in loose frocks with hats too tall, and their women smoked in the hotel lobby, and characters in their literature were afflicted with ‘passions’. It was all very shocking, and, of course, no well-bred English person would behave so, but there was something so novel and titillating in bringing ‘round the beast to be carefully examined in captivity. And the French were too cultured to be quite as ‘fun’ as their American counterparts, which was always thought preferable.
Hannah had completed her examination of de Beringar in the drawing room before they’d come in to dinner, had not expected to be overwhelmed, and was not disappointed. Beringar had known the third Napoleon and had a handful of flattering anecdotes, none of which were verifiable now that the tarnished descendant had passed on. Not that she distrusted the duc in particular, but everyone who had been across the channel or to New York or London claimed some connection to the dead caboose-emperor, a diminished replica of his great namesake. The rest of Beringar’s conversation was limited to whom he had seen and where he had been, gauche despite being sincere in his excitement.
Henri showed no discrimination about whom he introduced or associated with, shocking everyone with his announcement of having come from the home of a literary type, a Mister Butler, who kept rooms on Fleet Street. It was agreed among the Beckfords’ party, in a silent telegraph of glances, that Henri ought to be excused his foreignness and that, being foreign, he could not have known the deep color on Butler’s reputation.
“You should all come to sit, on Wednesday, with Monsieur Butler!”
His exclamation in halting English sparked a volley of anxious looks. Hannah’s ribs creaked at each person’s perfect and secretary-like acquaintance with the busyness of their schedules for the next two weeks, as they lamented their unavailability.
The duc was handsome enough, in a French sort of way, a prominent blade of a nose and high cheeks which cradled downturned hazel eyes. Handsome and sufficiently imported to be an object of fascination to Miss Sloan, who had no one with more money or sense to caution her away. She had talked at the duc down the table’s length and over other guests in bad form, ignoring the initial furtive glances of dashing Mister Hilton, though Hannah saw now by his bland stare that he had probably got the flat and unsurprising lay of the land with Miss Sloan early on.
The last of the dishes were brought in and arranged, completely out of custom but entirely in line with Lady Alice’s giving deference to her quantity of table top lace, and conversation ceased.
It was November, and so the dishes were much heavier but no less delicious, in Hannah’s opinion, though thicker fare meant a lengthier stretch in their seats. The Beckfords kept an American chef trained in the French style, as much a zoo-park novelty as their duc, and worth whatever they paid him, she decided with each bite.
The soup was a creamy Mary Stuart, rich with winter garden vegetables, and a usually mouthwatering cut of antelope had been enhanced with a sweet and tangy cranberry relish. Stuffed capon and teal duck paired to make a grand course next to string beans and jacket potatoes. Apple wedges and cheese cubes formed tower walls around mounds of figs and dates, more than anyone could finish because Lord Phillip served them in quantity, fascinated by the Egyptian craze. Silver saucers of ubiquitous jellies in rose and orange dotted the dessert table, pastel pauses between a hot plum pudding and an apple pie. A lemon meringue tantalized with its glazed peaks, tart and firm, but Hannah decided it was unequal to her own recipe.
When the plates were bustled off, everyone hung in suspense, uncertain when to take their leave if the cloth wasn’t cleared away, which Lady Alice had forbidden. Lord Phillip cast long glances at his placid wife and shifted in his chair, but Alice refused to be hurried in robbing herself of appreciation for her dining room. When she perceived that her guests had been given sufficient time admire her gifts as a hostess, she got up, and Hannah followed suit with the other women.
“Lady Hannah, would you like Lord Phillip or Sir William to see to your carriage?” Alice volunteered hopefully.
“No, thank you. I’m really quite enjoying myself.” She wasn’t, actually, but she was enjoying the effect her presence was having.
Lady Alice swallowed half of her smile and exchanged a glance with her husband. “Wonderful.”
This was why she’d come.
The Beckfords had always been cool in their treatment of her, from the first days of her marriage to Gregory, and had been some of the first to cut her when he died and scandal ensued. They had also been among the first to pretend that they hadn’t when it became apparent that she wouldn’t be gotten rid of. Not many, certainly not people so high on the scale as Lord and Lady Beckford, wished to be marked for having crossed a Lennox-Webster. They tolerated her now, and like others who made up her list, Hannah was determined to make them sorry for it.
The gentlemen bowed them out, and Alice led their gallows-procession to the drawing room.
If the dining room had established Lady Alice’s dominance in the house, the drawing room reinforced it. They filed in and were bathed by light from the floor lamps’ frosted, rose-bedecked globes. The antique-bronze frames of sofas, lounges, and chairs hugged feminine raspberry velvet with a passionate fervor that resisted all masculine efforts upon the décor. If Lord Phillip had ever tried to slip in a Khartoum bust, a painting of pyramids or even baying hounds, he had surely been caught and soundly slapped down.
They all settled across their respective borders. Miss Sloan and Lady Anne took up a sofa together as allies, employing their battle plan against Hannah in whispers or polite remarks to one another upon an attractive necklace or smart coiffure, any topic they felt certain she wouldn’t join. Lady Alice rolled onto her hip in the awkward attitude required by a bustle until she was half reclined in her high-backed Lolling chair, and arranged the tiers of her lace cuff as though posing for her portrait. Hannah, with a decade of practice, stared at one stripe of the ivory and gold brocade wallpaper and kept her expression empty of anything so vulgar as feelings.
>
She wondered what James was doing tonight, what a man so shut up internally did with himself inside London’s glittering mechanism. Probably the same thing she did, sitting with her body in the center of a room and her consciousness all bunched up far back inside her mind. He had drawn her out when they danced, and put her back inside herself in the most agonizing, delicious way. She dared to hope that she’d done the same for him, in any measure.
It was strange how little he looked like the photograph, or even like the man she remembered at Meadowcroft. She had taken the picture out and studied it countless times, tried to make the Emily she remembered fit the woman in the image. She had mused over James, that his jaw had lost some fullness and become sharper, and that he was just as frank in his stares but that they were now hooded by a perpetual frown, a trained suspicion of the world. She would do this until guilt and longing nearly drowned her, before putting the photograph away for next time.
Longing for what? She’d pondered the question countless times. She longed for someone to touch her in a human way, a desire that shamed her but not for the reasons society would offer. She was jealous in an ugly but vague manner, of what James and Emily had shared. There was more, something about James that had spoken to her since Meadowcroft, but it was murky and undecipherable.
Conversation had taken root in earnest, surprising Hannah and bringing her from her guilty indulgence at the memory of James, his face, and the pressure of his hands.
“But I don’t understand,” protested Miss Sloan, full lips pursed into an unflattering frown. “If Mister Hilton hitched horses to his trains, wouldn’t it save him a fortune in coal?” She wondered aloud as only a person with a teaspoon of sense inside her head was capable of doing.
Hannah choked on Miss Sloan’s ignorance and pounded at her breast, while Lady Alice and Lady Anne hmm’d and shook their heads as if there were a possibility of the idea having merit.
“I don’t think it works like that,” said Hannah, no fear of offending the Hanley-Sloan dynasty.
“Why not?” sniffed Miss Sloan, looking sure of Hannah’s not having any better understanding of the matter than she did.
“Because he would spend as much or more on flattened horses.”
These were the moments she lived for. Lady Alice smoothed plum organza over her lap, and Lady Anne re-tied the silk tassel on her fan, while Miss Sloan rolled her eyes to the ceiling and flushed to her hairline. Hannah knew they all wished her gone and were prevented from asking her to go by the same good manners with which they’d victimized her.
After a long ticking of the mantle clock like a death knell, the women were spared by the men appearing. Lord Phillip came in with something like purpose, moustache twitching away the burden of some grave thing which he kept in and dreaded imparting to the lady of the house.
“Mister Hilton was just asking me, my dear, downstairs, if we have had a Doctor Grimshaw to dinner.” An urgent tremor to his question said that, based on whatever his exchange with Mister Hilton, Lord Phillip very desperately needed his wife to answer in the affirmative.
Hannah knew the answer already, and was as amused at James's becoming quite the thing as she was at seeing how Lady Alice negotiated the issue.
“Grimshaw.” Lady Alice straightened with his name drawn long through her lips, nerves turning her in her chair until she crushed her poor bustle flat. “I believe he is to dine next week.” Alice murmured her lie, leaving Hannah no doubt that their hostess would be scrawling out James's invitation as her guests donned their cloaks, its ink fanned dry before the carriages had lumbered away.
“You won’t regret it,” promised Hilton, starting for an open chair and then thinking better of it when he saw how it put him in proximity to Miss Sloan. “He was at the Findlay soiree. A hit with everyone. Lady Hannah, didn’t you share a dance with him?”
Hannah stared, not used to being the object of anyone’s direct attention in these moments. “I did. He was agreeable and clever. He’s a doctor of no mean skill.”
“A doctor,” wondered Miss Sloan eagerly, perhaps seeing that her ship had sailed with Mister Hilton, or more accurately that her train had departed its station. “He must do very handsomely.”
The Duc de Beringar, led astray by Miss Sloan’s empty attentions at dinner, pursed his lips now at her coarse rejection.
“He lost his wife only a year ago, Miss Sloan,” said Hannah, enjoying a banking of Miss Sloan’s hot expression. “He has another year of mourning to go.”
“Maybe when he’s done he’ll come to New York,” said Hilton. “Take me up on my invitation. My father’s had foundations laid for a new residency wing at Bellevue; it’s nearly ready to be occupied. A man like Grimshaw could do well for himself.”
“I’m not certain that he’s a man you can tempt with money, but opportunity…” Hannah nodded at the idea. “You may have him there.”
Mister Hilton looked pleased with the information, rubbing together broad palms. “Well, Lord Phillip has offered to show me to his club. Can I take any of you ladies down, before we go?”
Hannah got up from the deep sofa by small scoots, dragging out her final moments. “Yes, please.”
“Oh, no thank you,” smirked Miss Sloan through her transparent motive. “We’ve hardly got to talk at all. I’d prefer to stay now.”
“You should stay too, Mister Hilton,” Hannah shot back, turning away to hide her claws and strained by an unaccustomed weariness. “Miss Sloan has some very avant garde ideas about the use of horses with your trains.”
.
CHAPTER TEN
A little eight-bell clock atop the mantle chimed two in the afternoon. Hannah sat in the parlor, where James always attended her, and for a brief few moments thought herself society’s perfect woman, all exact measurements of body and attitude, no thinking or talking. She sat halfway in her chair without hanging forward or slouching back. Her bustle was settled to be neat and decorous without wrapping too far and drawing the wrong sort of attention. Her tucker lay crisp over her bosom, as concealing of her private temptations as the empty expression she practiced on her face. She folded her hands and rested them just so in her lap, not too close to her body so that they were suggestive and not so far out at the knee to be in bad form. She didn’t move or speak, and for a long moment after, tried not thinking at all. Then she exhaled, and wondered at the torture of spending a whole day at it the way most women were forced to do. She understood why some people lost the last of their sanity and killed. She slumped in her chair and wished for trousers so that she could tuck her hands between her knees.
Now and then she took a moment to behave as she was expected to, as all women were expected to. Silent timidity, unacknowledged feelings, and waiting to have everything from her emotions to her sexual impulses and her clothing dictated to her were healthy reminders of a woman’s useless lot. They were reminders of why she shouldn’t acquiesce to the demands of men like her brother-in-law.
The exercise only kept her nerves away for so long. James had her journal, had undoubtedly read at least part of it. What had he thought of it, of her? She must sound like old wallpaper, unflatteringly aged; turned up a bit at the corners but otherwise blandly, enduringly flat. She had waited half a day in agony, to ask what he’d thought while puzzling out a circumspect way to do it.
He was six minutes late. Not remarkable. ‘London traffic’ was a phrase whose meaning was understood in at least four countries. But James, while he had struggled to schedule an appointment and thought she didn’t notice, was usually punctual once it was made, striding in on a faint whiff of stale gin and lemons. Hard to pin down, but clockwork afterward.
Mrs. Delford came in with the tea tray and looked confused by the room’s being fifty-percent empty, as though James might have sneaked in past her watch, and she would be relieved if he had. “No note,” she muttered before Hannah could ask, and arranged her tray atop the table.
Hannah nodded and Mrs. Delford went out in a s
huffle, as though if she hurried to the door someone might be there.
Twelve minutes’ past. She put her sugar in the cup and splashed it, letting it sit until it dissolved like the next two minutes. By the time she poured in earnest, stirred in her cream and finished, she decided that twenty past meant James could pour his own damned tea.
At half past, with no note and no tardy Doctor Grimshaw, she got up and rang for Bethany to get her hat and coat and to have Ben bring her carriage around. She chuckled, snapping each jet button on her coat through its hole. He wasn’t coming, had decided not to after their last contentious visit. He was sweet, thinking that would prevent anything. Hannah smacked down her hat and ran it through with a pin. He could have had the decency to write and make an excuse for his bad manners, but he must have thought his silence, his not coming, was answer enough. She didn’t accept that answer, any more than she had accepted it on Tuesday, or on their first meeting at Meadowcroft.
She thoroughly rejected it, and she would tell him so to his face.
* * *
James huddled over his desk, slouched really, with one elbow fully resting on its surface and his face propped in his hand for so long that his cheek tingled. He hung over Hannah’s journal despite his decision the night before to leave it be.
He didn’t know the time, but he knew he was late, in the same way that a person who wakes late for an engagement knows that he is tardy before he glimpses his watch. He’d gotten up and turned the clock around backwards, and put his watch in the bottom desk drawer along with his guilt. It was for her own good.
He should have sent a note, had the good manners to explain his bad ones. Hannah had made this afternoon’s appointment a week ago, and their conversation on Tuesday hadn’t cancelled it, even if he pretended now that it had. He’d pretended a lot of things: Simon’s snoop, Hannah’s physician, an able doctor, and a functional person. It had been negligent, agreeing to treat Hannah’s real condition on pretense, and he felt in that moment the full leaden weight of Doctor Harter’s accusations. Hannah’s journal pressed it from heavy to crushing, conveying word by word a suffering that begged for genuine healing.