Silverbridge

by Joan Wolf

  “I want Isabel to leave,” the woman said in a tight, hard voice. “She can go to one of her other cousins.”

  Charles was dressed in a riding coat, which made his shoulders look very broad, and the expression on his face was wary as he regarded the woman who must be his wife. “Why should she go, Caroline?” he asked in well-acted surprise. “She’s doing a wonderful job. The children adore her.”

  “It’s not the children’s adoration that worries me,” the woman replied bitterly.

  The wariness in his brown eyes deepened. “What do you mean?”

  The woman threw up her head. “You know perfectly well what I mean, Charles. You are enamored of her! I will not be cheated on in my own house. Nor will I agree to a ménage á trois, like poor Georgiana Devonshire was forced to do.”

  His face grew hard, the way Tracy had seen Harry’s do. “You are being absurd, Caroline. And insulting. If you think that I would take advantage of a young girl living under my protection, you don’t know me very well.”

  She narrowed her eyes in irony. “I rather think it is the other way around, Charles, and it’s sweet, helpless little Isabel who is taking advantage of you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Now he was openly angry.

  “No, it’s not, only you’re too besotted to see it. I want her out of this house, Charles. Do you hear me?” A note of incipient hysteria had crept into her voice.

  His expression was grim. “She has nowhere to go!”

  “That’s not my concern. I took her in, gave her a home, entrusted her with my children, and she repays me by trying to steal my husband. Well, I won’t have it, Charles. Get rid of her, or I’ll throw her out myself.” And on that note she turned away from him, went by Tracy, then out of the room.

  Tracy felt her passing as a rush of cool air.

  Left alone, Charles turned to face the fireplace. He put his hands on the mantelpiece and bowed his head. From where she stood, Tracy could see the tendons standing stark in his hands, so tightly was he gripping the wood.

  She wondered what would happen if she spoke to him.

  “Charles,” she said softly.

  There was no change in his posture.

  She tried again, more sharply. “Charles!”

  Still nothing. He couldn’t see her, and he couldn’t hear her either.

  He stood thus for a long time, and Tracy stood watching him. Then he straightened away from the mantel and walked steadily toward the door. She watched as he went out and thought that she had been right about another thing. He did not walk with the catlike agility of Harry. He walked like a soldier.

  Tracy reported to makeup a few minutes early, then went back to her dressing room to wait until she was called. As Gail had promised, she was already there with a stack of letters that needed Tracy’s signature. As Tracy finished signing the last one, Gail said, “It seems strange to see you without Meg in tow.”

  Tracy glanced sharply at her secretary to see how she meant those words. Gail’s face was not wearing the ironic look that Tracy knew all too well; instead, she looked grave. “Talk about the quintessential poor little rich kid,” she said. “The things she let out yesterday about her childhood were enough to curdle my blood.” Tracy sighed. “When you are not loved when you are young, damage is done that is sometimes irreparable.”

  “We didn’t have any money, but we all knew that we were loved,” Gail replied. “I guess when you look at it that way, I was luckier than Meg.”

  “You were,” Tracy agreed. “Her brother is sending her to a therapist, and the woman told him that having this movie on the property has been beneficial to Meg. It’s given her something to think about besides the scale.”

  “Ah yes,” Gail said. “Her brother.” She arched an eyebrow. “I presume you mean Lord Silverbridge and not the younger one?”

  Tracy spread her skirts carefully and sat down on the chair in front of her mirror. “Lord Silverbridge is her guardian.”

  “He has something you rarely see in a man these days,” Gail said. She was sitting on the sofa stuffing letters into envelopes.

  “What do you mean?” Tracy asked curiously.

  Gail looked up and frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t say exactly. It’s not that he’s good-looking or sexy—though he is both of those things. But there are thousands of good-looking, sexy men in the world. It’s… oh I don’t know, but whatever it is, he has it.”

  “He’s an earl,” Tracy said.

  “What does that have to do with it?” Gail went back to stuffing envelopes with the recently signed letters.

  “Everything. He has always been absolutely sure of himself and his position in the world. It’s part of who he is. He’s an earl.”

  “That sounds very castelike,” Gail said. She stuffed the last envelope and stacked them so she could put a rubber band around them.

  “England is still a caste-ridden society,” Tracy said. “Much more so than America.”

  A knock sounded on the trailer door, and a male voice called, “They’re ready for you, Miss Collins.”

  “Thank you,” she called back. She checked her makeup in the mirror, picked up a sweater to wear over her light Regency dress, and went out the door.

  The morning’s shoot was of one of the most crucial scenes in the film. It came at the point when Martin is almost certain that his wife is betraying him with other men, and for the first time he verbalizes his suspicions. Julia denies his accusations vehemently, and the scene ends with a kiss that had been one of the central moments of the book and needed to be one of the central moments of the film.

  Dave took them over the scene before they started. “Jon, this scene is very important for Martin. He is almost convinced by now that Julia is being unfaithful to him, but he is still very sexually attracted to her. He resents this attraction, he wants to break free of it, but he can’t. This is the scene that shows all of his conflicts. He begins by accusing her, he grows angry as he listens to her deny his accusations, he wants to throw her out of his house and out of his life, but when she appeals to him physically, he can’t resist her. His feelings at the end of the scene are frustration, desperation, and pure unadulterated lust. Do you have that?”

  “Yes,” Jon said.

  The day was cloudy, the weather forecast was predicting rain in the afternoon, and Dave was anxious to get the shoot done before that happened. “All right, Tracy,” he said. “This is a pivotal scene for your character as well. For the first time we see clearly that Julia is aware of her sexual power, and when she uses this power to quiet her husband’s suspicions, the whole question of which of them is in control of the other comes to the fore.”

  “Yes,” Tracy said. In fact, long before she had attended the first read-through of the script, Tracy had determined to play Julia as a young girl who had been awakened to passion by her husband and who gradually comes to realize the power her sexual magnetism gives her over men. In Tracy’s view, Julia was innocent of the infidelity with which her husband charged her, but she was guilty of being a sexual tease.

  And that was the tragedy, in Tracy’s opinion. A young girl, a nineteenth-century young girl, brought up to consider herself powerless, a pawn of men, discovers that she possesses this marvelous power over the superior beings who have ruled her life. She exercises this power unwisely and thus brings about her own downfall.

  The book and the film deliberately left Julia’s culpability open to question. Was she or was she not guilty? But in Tracy’s mind, Julia was an innocent who was destroyed not just by her husband, but by the society that had made her what she was.

  “Great,” Dave said. “Let’s get rolling then.”

  They shot the scene once. From the first word that he spoke, Jon conveyed such a sense of barely controlled menace that Tracy could easily play off it. Confronted by an angry, threatening male, Julia would have instinctively reassured and placated. After her initial indignant denials of her husband’s accusations, she would attempt to appease him
by exercising the only power she had ever had over men.

  “Truly, my lord,” Tracy said in a soft, breathless voice, “you are the one that I love.” She lifted her lashes, and the brief glimpse she had of Jon’s angry face caused her to take one step away from him. Then, determined to be brave, she retraced that step and lifted her hand to touch his lapel. “I do not know why you should make these accusations against me.” She allowed her eyes to fill with tears. “They hurt me.”

  Angrily, he thrust her hand from his lapel. “My words can’t hurt you any more than your behavior has hurt me.” His voice was deeply bitter.

  Tracy blinked so that two tears would roll down her face. “You are my husband, my lord. You know well that I was innocent when I came to your bed. How can you believe that I would dishonor the vows that I made to you?”

  Jon was looking at her with an expression of mixed bafflement and fury. She cupped his face in her hands and lifted her own face to him. “I would never betray you, my lord.” She let her teeth rest on her lower lip, calling attention to the lushness of her mouth. “Truly,” she breathed.

  Jon gave a groan like a wounded animal, reached out, and crushed her to him. Then his mouth, hard, ravaging, punishing, came down on hers.

  It was a frightening kiss, and when he finally released her, Tracy tasted blood. She backed away from him and lifted her hand to her mouth.

  “How did you like that, madam?” Jon said dangerously. “Would you care to continue this encounter in our bedroom?”

  Tracy’s heart was pounding, and she stared at the blood that stained her fingers. That kiss had been much more than she expected.

  I’m frightened, she thought. I’m frightened, and my only safety lies in making him want me.

  With a barely concealed shiver, she stepped up to her husband, put her arms around his waist, and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she whispered. “I am so sorry that I have made you angry with me. I never meant to do that. I thought I was just being polite to those other men. There was nothing more than that, I promise you.”

  Jon’s body felt rigid to her touch. She could not see the expression on his face that the camera was filming. Finally, in a strangled voice, he answered her. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Cut,” Dave called, “and print.”

  He was beaming as he approached his two lead actors. “That was great, absolutely great.”

  A makeup woman had brought Tracy a tissue, which she was holding to her cut lip. “It was certainly realistic,” she said fervently. “You scared me half to death, Jon.”

  He still wore the look he had worn while shooting the scene. His voice was harsh as he answered, “I’m sorry I cut your lip. I didn’t mean to.”

  “The cut lip is great,” Dave enthused. He rubbed his hands together. “The first shedding of Julia’s blood.” He clapped Jon on the back and turned to Tracy. “You were marvelous, Tracy—innocent yet very sexy. Okay. Let’s do it again.”

  As soon as he finished speaking, the rain began to fall. Tracy was relieved that she wasn’t going to have to redo the scene. She did not want ever again to feel herself locked in Jon’s steel-like embrace or be the subject of his ravishing kiss. The experience had been both scary and deeply repulsive.

  Greg came up with a large golf umbrella and held it over her while Dave complained. “Damn, damn, damn. If the first take doesn’t come out, we’re going to have to do it all over again.”

  “I’ll bet the scene is great the way we shot it,” Tracy said.

  Dave sighed. “I’ll have to wait until I see the rushes tomorrow. This was the last scene in the garden. We’re supposed to start filming in the house next.” He sighed again. “Well, the rain has finished us out here. At least that will give us more time to get the house ready to begin filming there.”

  The rain was drumming hard on Tracy’s umbrella. “What about the actors, Dave? Are we free for the afternoon?”

  “Yes,” Dave said. “But be ready to be called tomorrow. If I see a problem with today’s filming when I view the rushes, I’ll want to refilm the scene.”

  16

  Gail was on the phone in the trailer when Tracy got back. She gave her secretary a brief wave, sat at her dressing table, and began to cream her face, all the while listening to Gail’s half of the conversation.

  “I don’t see how Tracy is to do the Letterman Show when she’s still filming in England, Mel,” Gail said in a reasonable tone.

  Tracy swung around in her chair and mouthed the words NO LETTERMAN at Gail. She hated to do the Letterman Show. He kept the temperature in his studio at a few degrees above freezing, which would have been okay if she could have worn wool slacks, a sweater, and long underwear. But the studio insisted that she look glamorous, which translated to “bare a lot of flesh,” and the two times she had done the show she had frozen.

  Still speaking reasonably, Gail said, “Yes, I know she has a film coming out at the end of June, and yes, I know that the studio expects her to promote it. But she can’t be in two places at one time, Mel.” Gail rolled her eyes at Tracy as she listened to Mel’s reply. Then she put her hand over the mouthpiece, and said, “He wants you to fly to New York, do the show, and fly back to England the next day.”

  Tracy held out her hand. “Give me that phone.”

  Gail complied.

  “Mel?” Tracy said. “Have you lost your mind? I am not crossing the Atlantic twice in two days!”

  The reply came over the wire from California, “You can take the Concorde, babe.”

  “No, I cannot take the Concorde. The whole idea is ridiculous.”

  “Tracy.” She always knew Mel was annoyed when he called her Tracy and not babe. “The studio expects you to promote this film. They expect it to be one of the blockbusters of the summer and, as its star, you have to do your part to publicize it.”

  “I know that, Mel.” Her voice was steely. “And I will do Leno when I get back home. But I am not flying in and out to do the Letterman Show, which I hate.”

  “He has a lot of power.”

  “Screw his power,” Tracy said. “And screw you, too, Mel.”

  Mel sighed. “All right. I’ll beg off Letterman “Thank you.”

  “There’s going to be some publicity about you coming from another source anyway. What’s going on between you and the Earl of Silverbridge?”

  “What?”

  “I got a call from someone at the Examiner. Evidently Jason Counes has contacted them about some pictures with you and His Lordship. Kissing.”

  “Oh my God,” Tracy moaned. “I thought Harry got those pictures away from him!”

  “Aha! Then you were kissing Silverbridge!”

  “Mel,” Tracy said dangerously, “Jason Counes does not have any pictures. Lord Silverbridge took his camera away from him.”

  “He may have taken the camera, but Counes unloaded the film first.”

  “Shit,” said Tracy.

  Mel laughed.

  “It’s not funny! Lord Silverbridge will be horrified to find himself in a scandal sheet.”

  “It won’t be the first time it’s happened to him, babe,” Mel replied. “And the publicity won’t hurt you at all. An earl. My, my, my.”

  Tracy said tensely, “Can you contact Counes and buy the pictures from him?”

  “Not likely. And if I do, he’ll only give the Examiner a story about our buying the pictures. Or give me the negatives after he’s had them copied.”

  There were tears of frustration and anger in Tracy’s eyes. “There must be something we can do.”

  “Just ride out the storm, babe. Just ride out the storm.”

  “Thanks, you’re a great help.” She slammed the phone down, pulled the wide elastic band off her hair, and threw it across the room.

  Gail looked at her in concern. Tracy had a temper, but it usually blew over quickly and never manifested itself in a physical way. Then Tracy turned back to her dressing table and lowered her face into her h
ands. “God,” she said in muffled tones. “How am I going to tell Harry he is about to be featured in one of the worst newspapers in America?”

  While Tracy was on the phone with Mel, Harry was approaching the outskirts of Warkfield with Meg in the car seat beside him. He was taking her to her appointment with Beth Carmichael, her therapist.

  Meg was silent, but Harry scarcely noticed. He was too busy replaying in his mind his meeting with Tracy in the morning room the night before.

  I insulted her, he thought. She didn’t like the way I looked at her.

  Harry was having an increasingly difficult time fitting Tracy into the category he had established for her in his mind. He was trying very hard to see her as a movie star, but the more time he spent with her, the more difficult it became for him to see her as anything but Tracy.

  No other woman had had the impact upon him physically that she had. And there was something about her personality, an underlying sweetness all the trappings of Hollywood could not disguise, that stirred him enormously.

  They had reached the top of the hill that led down into the town of Warkfield, and Harry glanced over at Meg. She smiled at him and he felt the protectiveness that she always evoked in him awake. She looked so terribly fragile.

  “It’s going well with Beth?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  The car was gathering speed on the steep hill, and Harry put his foot on the brakes to slow it. His foot went right to the floor.

  In the flash of a second, the situation presented itself to him. There was a line of cars at the bottom of the hill, waiting for the light to change, Meg was in the seat beside him, and he had no brakes.

  “Meggie,” he said, using the same tone of voice with which his ancestors had ordered men into battle. “Get into the backseat and put on the seat belt. Fast!”