But how could I blame him? If he were looking down upon me now from some other world, he must be sharing all my anguish. How could he have dreamed that his final gamble would lead to this? It could never have crossed his mind that he would not make it home that last night, that he would never be able to ransom those scorching canvasses from Poncet before the year was out.
But there was only one avenue which might ever allow me to meet Poncet’s demands, at least for a time, and thinking of my dead husband would not make it any easier for me to embark upon it.
I would have to take up, with quiet discretion, my grandmother’s profession. No doubt that was what Poncet had meant to imply when he’d told me that I would need to learn the subtle ways that a woman can work her will upon the stronger, the richer, the more powerful sex. But even this did not offer a sure solution; in a business which puts a premium on youth, I was already too old, at twenty-six, to achieve more than a modest success. I was sure I could never rival the grandes horizontales of Paris. Could I even earn enough to keep him from acting on his threats? And what would become of me as the years advanced and my earning power declined?
The day would surely come when those paintings could no longer be hidden.
I could see myself, rough and coarsened, living hand-to-mouth as my grandmother had, being frigidly cut by the self-same respectable ladies and gentlemen whose soiled linen I would wash and iron, whose dirty floors I would scour on my hands and knees.
She had been right about everything, everything. She had looked straight at the world as it was, not as one might wish it to be.
“Oh, Frederick,” I whispered into my pillow that night. “Where are you now? I need you!”
But my lost Frederick could not answer my desperate prayer. It took a living man to do that. It took Sir Anthony Camwell.
He had told me, before his departure in May, that he did not expect to return to France again until July. Yet three days after my meeting with Poncet, Sir Anthony made a sudden, flying visit to Paris and called upon me the very morning after his arrival.
I had spent many sleepless hours since Poncet’s revelation and was already steeled to make the speech I knew I must. I intended to tell Sir Anthony that I would see him no more. Perhaps he would attribute this to the revealing incident at Fontainebleau, for I was at a loss to invent a better explanation. But sooner or later, some part of the truth must become apparent to him—the paintings themselves might remain a secret, but I could hardly hope to conceal, equally well, the means I would have to take to keep them one. I remembered how proudly Sir Anthony had introduced me to friends and acquaintances on the day of Caylat’s triumphant show. I felt ill as I thought of the shame that would redound to him when Paris began to whisper that the lady he had honored so greatly had set out along the primrose path.
“You are unwell, Madame Brooks!” exclaimed Sir Anthony before I had a chance to do more than welcome him.
“Oh no, I am merely a little tired,” I demurred.
“Then you have been working too hard! While I—” Here he broke off. I sensed that he was profoundly agitated behind his polished veneer.
“Can I do anything for you? I really ought to let you rest and come back another time,” he then proposed with anxious solicitude.
“Oh no, not at all,” I said, uncertain as to which of his contradictory offers I was addressing. I could think of nothing further to add. The moment had come to bring our brief but precious friendship to an end.
My mind was spinning. My prepared speech had slipped from my memory, and I sought helplessly for a gentle way —yet one which would leave no opening for questions or objections—to tell him that I would not see him again.
“Madame Brooks,” he broke out rather breathlessly before I could say more, “let me tell you what has brought me back to Paris. I have been thinking of you constantly since I was last in France, and I find myself unable to hide my feelings any longer, although I know it is premature to express them. I have struggled to keep my distance until the passage of time would make my declaration less unseemly. But I cannot continue to be silent. I must tell you that everything you have done since the day I first saw you, and every word you have spoken, have convinced me that you are the only woman on earth whom I could ever love.”
I lifted my eyes to stare at him with blank astonishment. I might have read his heart at Fontainebleau, but he had always been so reserved! And it seemed inconceivable he could have chosen this wretched moment to make his passionate avowal. I barely comprehended the full significance of his words.
“I never dreamed,” he continued, “that I could love anyone as I have come to love you. Madame Brooks… Fleur… you have already won my heart. Will you take my hand as well?”
Really, I must have been particularly dim that day: It was a full minute or two before I grasped that he was asking me to marry him.
“But you hardly know me,” I stammered at last, still thinking of the paintings but not yet perceiving that he had offered me a way out of my impossible dilemma. It was incredible that he should wish to take me—me, Fleur Deslignères, the granddaughter of Holwich, Kent’s most notorious and least upstanding citizen—back to England, to be introduced to his well-bred friends and to be installed in the very heart of his family circle.
“I know the woman you are,” he was saying. “And I know that nothing on earth could ever alter my regard… my love… for you.”
The irony of this was almost more than I could bear. He knew nothing of the woman I was, nothing. He knew only the woman I had been with him.
“Will you have me?” he whispered.
He wanted to marry me! Who would have dreamed that his nobly restrained passion could at last have driven him to propose such a mesalliance!
But he was rich and generous, and if I were very careful with what he gave me, perhaps I could keep Poncet permanently at bay. Sir Anthony himself need never know.
My whole soul cried out against what I was about to do, but I am afraid that those cries were not quite as strong as the horror I had struggled to repress at my every thought of the only other route out of my difficulties. After all, to give myself legitimately to a man I liked so deeply and sincerely was a far less hideous prospect than that of selling myself to a series of men I neither liked nor loved.
I struggled with my conscience, I fought to maintain some semblance of calm, and finally I managed to answer, “Yes, Anthony, I will.”
I can’t say that he looked as elated as one might have expected. He seemed to be waiting hopefully for something more. I knew what was wanted, but I could not quite manage it. So instead I did what I imagined was the next best thing and said, “It will be an honor—and a joy—to be your wife.”
He dropped to his knees by the arm of the sofa, took my clenched hands in his own, and very gently began to loosen my fingers.
“Are you quite sure?” he whispered. “Perhaps it is too soon for you to give your heart to anyone. Tell me, Fleur, do you love me at all?”
My recurrent vision of the only alternative that remained to me, should I deny him what he hungered for, was so alarming that it filled my voice with real feeling as, wild with relief and despair, I cried out, “Oh, yes, yes, yes! I do!”
I remember only fragments of the rest of that feverish conversation. He took me in his arms once or twice, but now that the moment had come, when I was at last free to yield to the warm pressure of his body against mine, when I might have given him my lips boldly with no need for self-recrimination on either his part or mine, my blood did not surge with fire. I felt utterly numb and exhausted; he must have noticed this, for every so often he anxiously renewed his inquiries as to my health.
I kept assuring him that I was well, that my pallor was simply the result of having slept badly the night before.
“Then you must sleep now!” he declared. “Let me warm a cup of milk for you. It may help to relax your nerves,” he continued, and added with a regretful smile, “which I fear I have o
nly jangled further.”
“Oh no!” I said, trying to smile as well. “I am rather tired, it is true, but f have a pupil coming within the hour. I can’t risk being half sedated when she arrives.”
“But you must send her away,” he decreed. “You have obviously been pushing yourself beyond the limits of your endurance.”
I took a deep breath and swallowed my annoyance. I was still my own woman, although I would not be for long.
“No,” I said firmly. “I will not drink hot milk. I will not send my pupil away. And I will not marry you if you persist in ordering me about like this!”
Instead of looking chastened, he laughed.
“How right you are,” he said tenderly. “Forgive me, Fleur. I swear to you that I will never give you any reason to regret the new life you have chosen with me.”
CHAPTER NINE
No regrets! What a vain promise!
Regrets had become the treacherous prevailing undercurrent of my life; every time I imagined that I had risen free of them at last, they dragged me down again.
I was drowning in regret.
My whole life was about to become one huge and irreparable lie.
But I was too drained and demoralized to fight it any longer.
Sir Anthony remained in Paris only long enough to put into motion the machinery of matrimony—we were to be married in August here at St. George’s English Church. Before he returned to England, he expressed some concern about how I would adapt to my new surroundings. Did I wish to visit Charingworth, his ancestral home, and arrange alterations to its decor that might suit my taste better than its present furnishings?
I did not. I waved a hand toward my threadbare carpet and faded curtains and asked him, with a laugh, if he really imagined I might find his splendid country house wanting in any way.
Privately I knew that my new surroundings, however ornate, could never begin to console me for the loss of my freedom or for marriage to a man for whom I must never permit myself to care too deeply.
For I already knew that if I allowed myself to feel too much for him, if I were to trust him too completely, I might be tempted to pour my heart out. And if I were ever foolish enough to confess the truth, I was sure to lose everything.
He held me in his arms and gave me a tender kiss before he left me. With any encouragement, his kiss might have been less restrained, but although I felt almost comforted by the warmth of his arms, the physical desire which had ravished me in Fontainebleau did not flare up again.
Everything inside me seemed frozen. Perhaps the chill had taken hold when Poncet had presented me at last with the invoice for all the passion which had been unleashed within my first marriage. Perhaps it had come over me the first time I’d found myself obliged to lie to Sir Anthony, telling him I loved him when I could barely comprehend the true nature of my feelings. A week ago I had been anxious to see him again; I’d been restless with thoughts of those forbidden embraces I knew he yearned for yet denied himself, and when I’d dreamed of being close to him once again, of knowing that the lightest touch of his hand would carry the weight of a wild, inadmissible passion, I felt as if my skin had been touched by a hot wind.
But no more.
Now I could hardly wait for him to depart for England and relieve me, at least for a time, of the obligation to invent cheerful answers to his affectionate questions.
Once he was gone, I could at last begin to think more coolheadedly about all that this marriage would require of me and could try to devise some way of rising to the challenge.
But when I was finally free to devote my attention to these pressing matters, I found that the mere prospect of becoming Lady Camwell filled me with stark terror.
I recalled a joking remark Lord Marsden had once made to the effect that his cousin sometimes seemed to hold himself to an almost inhumanly high standard of conduct. Lord Marsden had punctuated this observation with an indulgent laugh, but now the memory alarmed me. No doubt it was true; and no doubt Sir Anthony would hold his bride to the same relentless standards. He might be kindly and diffident in France, where he came for pleasure, but who knew how he might behave in his own domain? Would that inflexible morality I had sensed in him from time to time be the law by which he ruled his household?
Oh, there were a thousand reasons why this marriage could never work! But somehow I would have to keep it limping along for as long as I could.
If Sir Anthony had proposed to me a week earlier than he actually had, how would I have responded? I would have had to ask him to give me time to think—it was all so unexpected. Then I would have had to examine myself as to whether I honestly loved him or believed that I might be coming to love him. I would have had to explore every obstacle to closeness of which I was now becoming painfully aware. I would have been obliged to confront him with all the things in my past that were sure to scandalize his friends, his family, and very likely my high-minded suitor himself.
Now I no longer had any of these luxuries—of time, of fearless soul-searching, or of candor.
I would have to marry him whether I loved him or not. I would have to conceal from him anything and everything that might suggest how unwisely he had chosen his wife.
I would have to mimic love without ever allowing myself to feel it. I would have to suppress any impulse to speak too freely: I might expose my loneliness, an incessant nostalgia for my old life, or my continual longing for Frederick; I might make some thoughtless and revealing allusion to my grandmother, or voice an opinion that someone in my privileged position could scarcely be expected to hold. One careless word might shatter the illusion of love, not to mention the identity I had acquired not only by marriage to Frederick but by my own efforts as well—that of the mysterious, refined, reserved, and elegant Madame Brooks, who had won Anthony Camwell’s heart without even trying.
Oh, there would be countless areas where a misstep could cost me dearly.
I would have to adapt myself quickly to a very unforgiving harness or risk exposing myself to constant criticism and scandal-mongering, for surely the freedoms that generous-spirited Paris had allowed Madame Brooks would never be tolerated in the upper echelons of English society.
If only there were someone I could talk to!
I thought, with a sharp pang of loss and longing, of my dear friend, Guy Hazelton. I had not seen him for years, not since he’d given up his life in Paris to return to England with his beloved Harry.
Of course, like me, he was the sort of person who would be shunned by English society if he were ever to stand in the light of truth. In Paris, his inclinations were not looked upon with nearly the same horror that is felt for such things in England. In Paris, his passion for Harry had not been entirely clandestine; within the small, tightly knit circle of our closest friends, it had been as casually accepted as his friendship with me.
How I missed him!
To him alone I might even have been able to confide every agonizing nuance of the tangle in which I now found myself ensnared.
What a relief it would have been to pour all my troubles into his discreet and sympathetic ear. I had always been able to tell Guy things I could barely discuss with anyone else—not with Marguerite, not even with Frederick. Frederick, although he had known virtually every salient fact about my life, had never cared to know how I felt about anything that made me less than joyful.
He had been the same with Guy. Although Guy and I had become the closest of confidantes, Frederick had held back; he’d made it his business to avoid knowing anything about the anguish Guy had suffered for months before he’d found the courage to reveal the dangerous secret in his heart, only to find that his love for Harry was returned.
To Guy alone had I ever admitted that I still bore the scars of having been a virtual outcast in the village where I had been raised, and that it was this that had made me so determined to present one face to Paris even as I showed another one altogether to my husband. To Frederick, I was his fleur du mal. To Paris, I was onl
y his devoted and angelic wife.
I’d had few secrets from Guy. But Guy had faded out of my life, through no fault of his own. I had not seen him since the night of my miscarriage, when we’d dined at the Coq d’Or.
Afterward Guy had written to me several times from London, but I had never been able to answer his cheerful letters. How easily I might have talked to him about the devastation of losing my child. But the painful task of trying to put it on paper proved far beyond my power. Eventually his own letters had stopped. When at last I broke my silence to write to him of Frederick’s death, it turned out that he had moved long ago from the West End flat which was the only address I had for him.
It was entirely possible, however, that I would run into him again in England. I hoped I would. At least it was one thing I could still anticipate with real pleasure.
But suppose that some day the scandalous secret about his own private life came to light?
I knew that I would never turn my back on him; never could I close my door against a beloved friend.
But the doors behind which I must live in England would not be mine to open or to close. Certainly I could never assume that my future husband would unlock his gates to every pariah I might choose to claim as a friend.
And I knew that if he proved to be as rigid and intolerant as I feared he might, I would turn away from him with a heart of stone. What were those “responsibilities” of his, after all, if not some feeling of obligation to uphold the standards and morals of the narrow and ungenerous society which had spawned him?
As I considered all the difficulties, real and imaginary, that lay in wait for me, my sense of hopelessness became almost unendurable. I began to feel as if I were under a lifetime sentence of transportation and bondage.
I loved Paris and hated England. I didn’t want to live there, and certainly not in the antiquated luxury of some baronial manor, where my every breath would be drawn under the frigid eyes of a huge staff of disapproving servants whose lineage would almost certainly compare favorably with my own and who would probably discern this pretty quickly.
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