Grahame, Lucia

by The Painted Lady

  Another long silence.

  “Well, I suppose I had better tend to the horse then,” said the other man finally, still in the same expressionless voice.

  I heard my husband let out his breath.

  When the horse had been taken to the livery stable and my husband had assured himself that it was likely to recover, we returned to our carriage. Inside, he turned to me, and I realized, with something like shock, that he must have been exercising enormous self-control for the past twenty minutes or so. He had given so little indication of this that I had not fathomed the depth of his rage.

  “Have you any idea how hard that miserable Sparling wretch must have forced that animal to run?” he demanded. “To win a bet with his father! My God!”

  His eyes were blazing.

  I understood his anger and had almost been wishing that something would occur to ruffle his tiresome, imperturbable equanimity. But not this. The reemergence of that disturbing aspect of my husband—for the second time that day—frightened me, and involuntarily I shrank from him.

  He turned away, leaned back in the seat, and closed his eyes. After a while he said quietly, with a rueful sigh, “That’s all we need, another groom.”

  I did not attempt a response.

  “Oh well,” said my husband wearily. “It will lighten the work of the others, and I suppose that’s never a bad thing.”

  He seemed to shake off the last remnants of strong emotion and turned again to me.

  “You don’t mind driving back alone, do you?”

  “Alone?” I said. “Why? Where are you going?”

  “I think I had better remain here until the whole business is settled,” replied my husband. “Who knows what may happen should Lord Sparling decide to come looking for his lost property.” He smiled without warmth. “It seems that I have just become a horse thief!”

  That night, to my astonishment, he came to my bedroom. Only moments after I had put out the light, I heard his soft rap at my door.

  My heart pounded violently as he crossed the room to me. Was something wrong? Or had he simply tired at last of waiting?

  He sat down upon the edge of the bed.

  “Did I wake you?” he said.

  “No, I wasn’t asleep yet. What is it, Anthony? Has something happened?”

  “No,” he said. He reached across the counterpane to take my hand.

  “May I lie here with you for a while tonight?” he asked.

  “Oh, of course,” I said. My throat was so full I could hardly speak; I didn’t know whether it was alarm or a fragile joy that was nearly choking me. Perhaps it was both.

  He took off his shoes and stretched out beside me. He was on top of the bedclothes and fully dressed; I lay beneath them in a heavy winter nightgown.

  “You were wonderful today, you know,” he said.

  “I was afraid you’d be…”

  I hesitated.

  “Be what? Shocked by the things you said?”

  “Shocked… or embarrassed. I ought to have told you about my infamous grandmother long ago instead of springing it on you like that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “I rather enjoyed it.”

  Already he was starting to make me feel too good, just lying there next to me, talking in the dark, giving me the simplest and most precious lover’s gift, the feeling of closeness, of being a part of something—not alone.

  I turned over on my side to face him.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I whispered hesitantly.

  He laid his hand over mine, interlacing our fingers lightly. That felt good, too. We lay that way for a long time, not saying anything, until his hand seemed as much a part of me as my own, as if the borders between our separate skins had dissolved away.

  I knew this shouldn’t be happening. Innocent as it was, I knew I would have to stop it before I started to need it too much. I’d had a letter from Poncet two days earlier. Again he wanted to raise the monthly payments. God only knew how I would manage to satisfy him. It couldn’t last much longer.

  “I’ve been wanting to kiss you all day,” said my husband. That was all. He didn’t move toward me. He just said it—a simple statement of truth, not a demand, not a rebuke.

  My heart ached. Surely there was no danger in it. It was such a small thing; he’d been so patient with me and understanding, how could I withhold something as trivial as a kiss? What harm could it do to bestow that one tender favor?

  I moved a little closer and slipped my left arm under his neck. With my right hand I began to stroke his hair. A frantic inner voice screamed at me to stop. I ignored it.

  “Fleur?” said my husband, as if he didn’t quite believe what was happening.

  I opened my lips and brought them to his.

  I never wanted it to end.

  He kissed with the same languorous grace that characterized everything he did. He kissed as if that one kiss were everything he had ever wanted or could ever want. Even when he moved, so that he was above me, his body half covering me, he never tried to claim more of me than my mouth. All of his energy and concentration were invested in that kiss.

  His mouth was so warm; his tongue’s lazy exploration of the world behind my lips, so sweet; he tasted so good, so fresh.

  I felt my own mouth grow more urgent.

  All my careful resolutions to remain in control began to disintegrate. I wanted this to go on forever.

  No, I wanted it to go further….

  I had forgotten that a kiss could be so seductive.

  That was when he took his lips away. I stared up at him, silent with wonder.

  He stood up.

  “I’d better let you sleep,” he said gently. “Good night, Fleur.”

  I was too dazed to answer him right away.

  By the time I could have, he was gone.

  I sat up dizzily and tried to comprehend what had happened.

  That kiss… it had sent little waves of flame skittering through my veins. I could still feel them.

  It was too much.

  It wasn’t enough.

  He had said his door would always be open to me.

  I opened the door into the gallery and started to walk toward the wing where he slept.

  Already my courage was failing. What would happen if I arrived at his bed only to find that the fragile heat he’d sparked in me had dissipated. Or I came to him only to disappoint him once again, and this time in spite of the desire that brought me to his bed? Could I bear another night like the one in Athens, especially now, after the pure magic of his kiss?

  My steps began to flag.

  There was an open door on my left.

  Beyond the threshold was the room where his mother had stayed during her visit with us.

  I came slowly to a halt. Suddenly I was cold again.

  By the dim light from the gallery, I could see into the vacant room. No trace of Lady Whitstone remained. It was as if she had never been there.

  I shivered as I remembered the ruthless speed with which my husband had dispatched her. As unpleasant as she was, what had she done to be thrown out of his house with such chilly indifference? She’d asked a few rude questions and made a few disparaging remarks, that was all. Her crime was nothing compared to mine. And she was his own mother.

  If he could do that to her, how would he treat me when the day of reckoning came, as it surely must?

  I leaned weakly against the door frame.

  I would have gone to him with that kiss still burning on my lips, holding nothing back. If he could wreck my first line of defense with a mere kiss, I could be sure that by the time I got up from his bed, he would have taken my heart. It wouldn’t have fallen to him easily, but once it was his, it would be his forever.

  Then I’d be lost beyond all hope.

  There was no possibility of salvaging this marriage—it was built on sand and was sure to come crashing down.

  When it did, I had to be able to walk away intact. I couldn’t go, leavin
g part of myself irrevocably in the possession of a man in whose eyes, from that moment on, I would be only a traitor and a liar. A shameless adventuress whom he’d once been foolish enough to love. A woman without an ounce of integrity. A sham.

  I knew that would be all he’d be able to see.

  Even if the sham had been transformed into the real thing.

  I turned around and went back to my room. The ache of loneliness, after that brief, illusory closeness, was almost more than I could bear. But at least it was familiar and manageable, unlike the imagined fate that had made me feel so weak and ill as I’d stood in the doorway of that empty, stripped-down bedroom.

  I wondered how long it would be before the room where I now lay had that same stark, denuded look.

  The following night my husband came to me again.

  I hadn’t yet gotten into bed. I’d been sitting by the window in an old nightdress, with a silver hairbrush in my hand. I wasn’t using it. I was staring out into the blackness of the night trying to see where I’d taken the first wrong turn. Was it in sitting for those paintings? Should I have denied Frederick the pleasure it had given him? The pleasure it had given me?

  Or had it been in paying Poncet for his silence? I still shuddered to think what would have become of me if I had not. Where would I be now? Certainly not here in this warm, luxurious room….

  My husband’s knock interrupted my reverie.

  My heart leaped and then faltered.

  I knew what I had to do. I had to retrieve the ground that I’d lost the night before. I had been thinking about this all day, but I hadn’t expected to have to act quite so soon.

  I got up and opened the door to my husband.

  He saw the hairbrush in my hand.

  “Let me do that,” he said, and led me back to the armchair in which I’d been sitting.

  Reluctantly, knowing that it was a mistake, I handed him the brush.

  He brought it to my temples. I closed my eyes for a moment and gave myself over to the sensuous pull of the soft bristles through my hair.

  At last I forced myself to turn around. I reached out my hand to take the brush from him.

  “Do you want me to stop?” said my husband. He looked surprised.

  “Yes,” I said. “I don’t like that… what you were doing.”

  “You don’t like it?” His voice was disbelieving.

  “No. I don’t like being touched. I’m sorry. I just don’t.”

  My husband did not lay the brush upon my outstretched palm.

  “So you don’t like being touched,” he said.

  There was no warmth in his voice at all. He struck the back of the brush against his left palm at the end of his sentence as if to give it a harsher emphasis.

  “No, I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

  “And I suppose you don’t like being kissed either.”

  “That’s right. I’m sorry.”

  “And last night you were just… being a dutiful wife.”

  “It was such a small thing… I thought it would make you happy.”

  “I see.”

  He began to stalk slowly up and down the room, still with the brush in his hand. At last he stopped, a few feet from me.

  “Tell me something, Fleur,” he said. His voice was so much colder than usual that I thought he must be angry, that his patience had worn out at last. When I met his eyes, they had an opaque, closed look. What were they hiding? Anger? Hurt? Or simply disbelief?

  “I want to know more about this… aversion of yours,” he said. “Is it that you dislike being touched? Or that you don’t want me to touch you?”

  What could he be thinking? That I was betraying him with somebody else? It was so absurd that I gasped with shocked laughter.

  “I’ve told you,” I exclaimed. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

  “Yes, so you’ve said,” he conceded. “And it was the same with Frederick, too?”

  “I’ve already told you so.”

  “So you have. You must forgive me for not quite understanding how you managed to have the happiest marriage in Paris although you couldn’t stand your husband’s touch. How did you make it work so well?”

  “How can you ask me something like that?”

  Now it was his turn to laugh.

  “How can I ask you that?” he cried. Then he dropped his voice slightly. “Because I want to know, Fleur. I want you to tell me bow you and Frederick were able to make each other so happy.”

  I felt a flash of rage. How dare he bring Frederick into this! But I knew it would be unwise to reveal my anger. “Maybe I didn’t make him happy,” I said sulkily. “Oh,” he said. “Then I wonder who did.” I didn’t answer.

  “Well? Is that how you… managed, Fleur? By sharing him?” His voice dripped with something—whether it was disdain or sarcasm I couldn’t tell.

  I flung up my head.

  “I don’t know what Frederick did when he wasn’t with me. I never asked.”

  I knew what he did. He drank. I’d shared him with wine, absinthe, champagne, and various aperitifs. His other loves were no mystery to me. They usually announced themselves fragrantly as soon as he got into bed. But it was no one’s business but my own.

  “And I thought you loved him,” my husband was saying.

  “You know I did!” That time I couldn’t quite keep the anger out of my voice.

  “I don’t know anything, Fleur. If I did, I wouldn’t be asking.”

  The house of cards was already beginning to fall.

  I moved round to the back of the chair, so that it was between him and me.

  “I don’t believe what you’ve been telling me,” he was saying. His voice had softened a little; it wasn’t quite so icy, but it was still much harder than usual. “I don’t believe that you couldn’t bear his touch. I don’t believe that you loved him but didn’t care what he did or with whom he did it when he was apart from you. I don’t believe that you could love any man the way you loved him and not give a damn whether or not he went to other women. Maybe it’s true. But I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, I can’t help that,” I said. “That side of marriage that you’re so concerned about… for some people it’s not all that important.”

  To my amazement, my husband began to laugh again.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. Somehow I felt he was mocking me. “But I’m not one of those people. And I don’t believe that you are either. Or that you always were.”

  He waited.

  I looked down at my hands. They were clutching the back of the chair. My knuckles were white.

  “What happened, Fleur?” he asked softly. “What happened to you between the day we went to Fontainebleau and the day you married me?”

  I felt myself go pale.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whispered.

  He gave me a long stare and then shook his head, as if I were some kind of equation he couldn’t solve.

  “That won’t do, Fleur,” he said. “It’s time we got to the bottom of this.” He sounded tired now, and he looked tired as he lowered himself onto the edge of my bed. “It may take a while; why don’t you sit down.”

  I didn’t move.

  “What is this, an inquisition?” I asked.

  I hadn’t intended for it to come out the way it did. I suppose it was fear that put the cutting words in my mouth and gave my voice its defensive edge.

  I saw my husband’s face darken with anger. Then it became impassive.

  “Well, if that’s how you feel, I’ll end it,” he said with a shrug. He stood up. “But not until you’ve answered one question. I want to know what you were feeling when you kissed me last night.”

  That was easy.

  “I wanted to make you happy,” I repeated.

  He met this with another short laugh.

  “No, Fleur,” he said. “That’s not what I asked you. I asked you what you were feeling.”

  I thought of the intoxicating river of happ
iness, warmth, pleasure, and desire that had carried me along as I’d given myself over to his confident lips, his warm, wandering tongue. There were a thousand words I might have used— seduced, subverted, lost, longing, scared, captivated, hungry. But one word kept racing ahead of the others. Happy. I had felt dangerously happy.

  “Nothing,” I whispered.

  “Nothing,” he repeated. “You mean it gave you no pleasure, no pleasure at all. You simply did it to please me. But it didn’t please you.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’ve told you, that whole aspect of marriage is disagreeable to me. I know you were hoping that if you waited long enough, I might change. But I can’t change. I can see how much you want to give me pleasure. But you can’t. I wanted last night to be different, too. But I can’t help what I don’t feel.”

  He turned away from me then and seemed lost in his own thoughts as he crossed the room to the doorway. Then he lifted his head.

  “It’s clear that you don’t want to talk about this,” he said. I stood in guilty, frozen silence, not looking at him.

  At last he spoke again.

  “I expected more from you, Fleur,” he told me.

  I was so nervous about facing him the following day that I did not come down to breakfast until very late. I hoped I would have the dining room to myself, but he was still there. I could tell from the way he greeted me, and from the note of his voice as we avoided the subject that weighed upon both our minds and instead spoke of insignificant things, that he regretted the harsh note he had struck with me the previous night.

  I felt inordinately relieved. Now that the uncomfortable subject had been thrust back into the shadows again, I hoped he would leave it there for a long time.

  Late that same morning my husband left for London and stayed there for a day or two. His manner to me, when he returned to Charingworth, was as kind and patient as ever. But no longer did he come to my bedroom—not to brush my hair, not to lie beside me and talk idly about the events of the day, not to take my hand or to taste my lips.

  Although I hoped that this alteration in our relationship would make our life easier, by eliminating the greatest source of tension between us, it did not improve matters. I knew that he had a profound sense of honor, and his manner told me that he still loved me. That alone would keep him faithful, although I had given him nothing to be faithful to.