I peeled off the paper to reveal a jeweler’s case. I raised the cover. Inside lay the diamond collar.
“Really, Mr. Blake,” I said, striving for a lightness that would match his as I attempted to hand it back to him, “this is a most inappropriate gift for a governess.”
“It is not mine to give.” He left the open box in my outstretched hand. “It belongs to you, Mrs. Hastings. It ought to make your life somewhat easier. Has it never occurred to you why I gave it to you?”
“I’ve always assumed that it was part of your campaign to turn me into a lady of fashion.”
“A doomed campaign, I see, in spite of some temporary victories,” remarked my husband, casting a disapproving eye at my gray dress. “But that was not why I gave you the diamonds.”
“Why did you, then?”
“We had been married for six months, and you were desperately unhappy. You would not, or could not, tell me why, nor could I discover where all your money was going. Nevertheless, it was clear that you had some pressing need which required every penny. There would have been nothing to prevent you, you know, from having the necklace copied in paste and exchanging the real thing for cash. I hoped it might present you with a discreet solution to your difficulties.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “You imagined that I would stoop to that!” I exclaimed, before I realized what a ludicrous protest it was.
But my husband did not laugh.
“Where’s the dishonesty in that?” he asked.
“To accept such a precious gift and then palm off a copy on you! That would be stealing!”
“I don’t see why. Once I’ve given you something, do you suppose that I still consider it mine? The necklace was yours to do with as you wished. There would have been nothing underhanded about selling it.” He hesitated before adding, “And if the lack of money was all that prevented you from bolting your marriage, it would have given you the means to do so.”
Now I was truly shocked.
“You wanted me to leave you! And like that!” I exclaimed in a very low voice.
“It was the last thing I wanted! But what could I do? You were miserable, you would barely talk to me…. I was racked with memories of how much happier you had seemed when I knew you in Paris. The diamonds, I thought, might give you the means to return to that other life, which seemed to suit you so much better than your life with me. Of course, I hoped you wouldn’t leave me! Of course I still struggled to delude myself that you loved me! But, more than anything, I wanted you to choose me freely…. I had no way of knowing, then, that you were caught in a snare from which not even these diamonds could have sprung you.”
“Well,” I said when I had absorbed his words, “I have been sprung from the snare of poverty, at any rate.” I told him briefly of my legacy.
“Oh,” he said. “So that is why Mr. Blake’s offer no longer interests you and why you wrote to turn him away! And I feared that it was because you had pierced my alias!”
“Then you did receive that letter, at least!”
“Shh!” he exclaimed with an expression of alarm. “Don’t let Madame Vignon hear you! She has terrorized me quite enough today. I would not like to let her discover that I am an even more incorrigible liar than she already believes me to be. My untruthfulness, in fact, is my second reason for having come to see you.”
“Your untruthfulness?”
“I told you once that I never lied to you. And then I lied to you not once but twice. I told you I hated you. That was a lie, or at any rate, it was not the whole truth. I want you to know that.”
I found this tepid comfort.
“And the other lie?” I said.
“Yes, the other lie,” he said somewhat haltingly. It seemed a more difficult one to confess to. “Well, you may as well know that when I came to your room that last time, it was not to ask you to leave. And when I put my hands on your shoulders, it was not because I felt sorry for you. I merely said that, after you pulled away, to cover my… Well, your manner seemed so altered when you met me at the station that… But then…”
He seemed to be having trouble completing his sentences.
“Oh, if only you knew what happened that day!” I burst out. “Andromeda threw me, and I bruised my shoulder horribly. It nearly killed me when you—”
“Good heavens, Fleur!” interrupted my husband. “You know better than to be thrown! How the devil could you have let something like that happen? Why, you might have—”
“I know,” I said humbly. “It was inexcusable. I wasn’t paying attention. I might have broken her leg.”
“—been seriously injured!” concluded my husband.
He sank down upon the sofa, shaking his head.
“Thank God nothing happened to you before—” he began in a choked voice. Then he brought his eyes back to mine.
“I was wrong about everything, Fleur,” he said more calmly. “Since you have been gone, I have begun to realize how little I troubled myself to understand you.”
I began to wonder whether I was dreaming again. Perhaps this conversation was as unreal as last night’s train ride.
“That’s not true!” I protested. “You went to endless trouble, again and again, only to be rebuffed each time!”
But he pressed on. “I was so harsh, so inflexible. As you so often pointed out, I have never known poverty. How could I imagine the kind of desperation it can lead to? It was unreasonable and unjust of me to insist that you ought to have trusted me enough to confide so delicate a matter as the source of your difficulties. I never deserved your trust. I have a great deal to answer for.”
“Oh no! It was I who wronged you! I did not value you at your worth.”
“No,” he persisted. “I think you did value me at my worth, which has proven to be very small. I have always prided myself not on being a gentleman—which is merely an accident of birth—but upon behaving as one, which is another thing altogether. And I was no gentleman to you, Fleur.”
Again I started to speak. I wanted to say that I had liked him better once he had ceased to be the perfect gentleman, but he lifted his hand to silence me.
“A gentleman,” he said, “would have simply bought the paintings, locked them safely away for a couple of centuries —only because they are far too lovely to be burned—and said nothing about them. He would have behaved as if he had never seen them, as indeed he should not have. They were never meant for my eyes. To use them as I did was to trample upon the most intimate act between man and wife. I knew you never wanted anyone but the man you loved to see that aspect of yourself.
“There is no excuse for what I did. I was beside myself with envy and jealousy. It made me so wild to think that you had given so much to another man, who betrayed you —I know you resent my saying that, but I must—that I managed to ignore my own worse crime. The use to which I put those paintings was just as heinous a betrayal.”
“No it wasn’t,” I said after a while. “It wasn’t a betrayal of trust. Or of love.”
My husband looked at me thoughtfully for a long, long time. Finally he said, “It was an abuse of power. My wealth and our marriage had given me power over you, and I used that power against you. It is not a lesser crime.”
“I betrayed you,” I whispered at last. “Can you forgive me?”
“If I had any right to judge you, I would forgive you everything,” was my husband’s reply.
I tried to absorb this but, alas, I was painfully conscious that it was nearly time for luncheon and that I was expected to preside over one of the tables where the few remaining students were to take their last meal of the term.
I had to seize the moment.
“You will let me come back to you, then?” I said with a kind of graceless urgency.
“Do you think that would be wise?” asked my husband gently.
“I have missed you, Anthony,” was the best I could manage in reply.
“Have you?” he said. “And so much so that you want to come back wit
h me to England and live with me forever?”
“Yes. There—or anywhere.”
“And all because you miss me.”
“Yes,” I faltered, and then added, “Really, I have missed you more than I can say.”
There was a frown on my husband’s face now, and his lips were pressed tightly together. He seemed lost in some vexing internal debate. I could almost see the subtle clash of conflicting impulses. He turned away from me and began to walk slowly up and down Madame’s prized Aubusson, his hands in his pockets, his head bent in thought.
When he finally came to halt before me, his eyes were both guarded and searching.
“I don’t know what is in your heart, Fleur,” he said, “beyond what you have seen fit to say under these rather difficult circumstances. But I have to know. For one thing, there is the whole question of children.”
How could I have forgotten?
He was right, of course. He had made it clear, time and again, that he did not want children. And I did—I yearned for them. No longer did I cherish the hopeless conviction that nature had condemned me to barrenness.
So there was a reason, after all, to hold back from making that final leap. Suppose I did return to him and gave him all the love that I had once reserved for Frederick and Frederick’s memory. Would I torment him, then, to put aside his own wishes in order to gratify mine? Would I have insisted upon bearing children to a man who did not want them? No. I would have wordlessly resigned myself to childlessness, killed my own hopes out of devotion to my husband —and made only the first of those endless, unspoken sacrifices that love demands and which breed the resentments and silences that gnaw away at love like worms.
There had to be another, a better way to love.
My nails dug into my palms as I thought of the children I would never know. I could see them so clearly—a little girl with hair like moonlight and gray eyes; a tiny boy, dark-haired like me and luminous with infancy. They were as real to me as if they already existed somewhere in time, waiting for the moment when they could finally be embraced. Oh, how had I, once again, let something that could never live become so precious to me! I wanted to reach out and pull them to my breast.
Instead, I opened my hands to let them go.
Dimly, I felt my husband press something into one of my empty palms—a snowy, perfectly folded handkerchief.
“You must understand,” he explained gently. “It’s not that I dislike the thought of children. I long for them. And I do think that, under happier circumstances, you’d have made a wonderful mother. I’m certain of it. But I will not risk bringing children into the world whom you might find yourself unable to love, because you do not love their father.”
“Oh, but I would!” I burst out without stopping to think. “My God, I would love them with all my heart. How could you suppose—-”
But there I stopped. I thought of his mother and of the interpretation that he must have put upon her lovelessness. If that was the crux of the matter—and I was certain that it must be—could I ever make a case for myself? Could I ever overcome his doubts and convince him that I loved him and that my love was true? Could I place my weightless hopes and imagined possibilities in the scales against the heavy reality of his own experience, the unloved child of a woman who had surely claimed to love her husband but who had not?
How could I ask him to take that chance?
I thought of the children who would never live except in my dreams unless I fought for them, and I opened my lips to try.
The ten-minute bell for luncheon rang imperatively and jarred me from my thoughts.
My husband continued to stand before me, motionless and silent, as if he had been carved from stone.
I groped vainly for words. I knew I was on the verge of breaking down completely, and that if I were not careful, within seconds I would be violating every code that governed how a respectably widowed English mistress ought to conduct herself in an interview with a prospective employer.
“But I can’t leave without saying good-bye to Mrs. Hastings, madame!” came a high voice from the hallway.
“This is hopeless,” said my husband with an oath.
He reached into his pocket, drew out his silver card case, and penciled something swiftly in the corner of one of his cards.
“Here is the address of the hotel where I am staying in Geneva,” he said as he handed the card to me. “You can find me there after eight o’clock this evening.” He paused and then added with evident difficulty, “I have the impression that you feel more kindly disposed toward me, now that you are your own woman again. But unless you can say that you love me—and convince me that your words are true and that your love for me is as strong as mine is for you—I cannot take you back. I won’t put myself through that again.”
And with that he was gone.
I stared at the doorway through which he had vanished, paralyzed with a bizarre mixture of bleak despair and wild elation. He loved me still! But what protestation of love could I ever make that would not render me as suspect as the boy who cried wolf?
And yet he loved me. As long as that was so, I would never turn away in defeat no matter what challenges he flung at me. Somehow I would find a way to prove that my love was stronger than his doubts.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When I announced myself to the discreet desk clerk as Lady Camwell, he barely blinked and told me that Sir Anthony was out.
I had arrived at the hotel too soon—it was only a quarter to eight—but nevertheless, as I proceeded to settle down to an anxious vigil on one of the palm-screened sofas, I felt bitterly disappointed. It seemed that my husband was not champing at the bit quite so eagerly as I.
Just then a gentleman raced in from the street, hair and tails flying, in a neck-or-nothing dash to the desk.
“Has a lady—?” he gasped.
The impassive clerk made a tiny gesture in my direction.
But I was already on my feet.
My husband paused for a moment before he turned, as if to assume, like a shield, the air of quiet dignity that I had once regarded as his very essence. When he faced me it was with a faint, unruffled smile; only the color in his cheeks betrayed him.
He advanced toward me calmly as he peeled off his right-hand glove.
“Forgive me, Fleur,” he said, holding out his hand with the utmost self-possession. “I hope I have not kept you waiting long.”
“Oh, not long at all,” I assured him breathlessly. But my voice, my savoir faire, everything dissolved as my fingers locked around his. “Tony,” I managed to choke out,
He moved closer, protectively.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “There’s no need to say anything.”
He led me to his suite and closed the door behind us with that same familiar air of calm dignity. But that was the last I saw of my self-possessed, unflappable, eternally, infernally, exasperatingly imperturbable husband for some time.
In seconds we had tumbled, entwined, against the door and on down, down to the carpet.
Under the deluge of my kisses, his splendid facade was disintegrating like a sandcastle under a tidal wave; he pulled me across the ruined fortifications and into the depths of his soul.
So he had fallen to me at last.
All the tumultuous, unbridled passion I had once longed to wrest from him—by calculation, by bitter provocation, by skillful erotic techniques—were mine, in exchange for nothing more than my unencumbered heart.
“Don’t you know how much I love you!” he whispered as he held me. “How could you dream that I would settle for less than this?”
I couldn’t see his face—I was crushed against him too closely—but I knew that not all the hot tears upon our cheeks were from my eyes.
“How did you know?” I asked when I could speak.
“Your eyes,” he said. “I hardly dared to believe what I thought I glimpsed in them when you walked into the study at Vignon. But now—downstairs—it was still there.”
“They say the eyes are the windows to the soul,” I remarked, stretching against him luxuriously. “Do you know, I dreamed last night that we went back to Fontainebleau, you and I. Do you ever think of that day?”
“For a long time I thought of it far too much,” was my husband’s wistful reply. “That was the day that I knew I had fallen hopelessly in love with you.”
“Not until then?” I exclaimed. “And you led me to believe that you’d been carrying the torch for me ever since you saw me at the Coq d’Or!”
“That! That was pure enchantment! Oh yes, I’d lost my heart to you long before we went to Fontainebleau. But it was there, when you tried to shield me from the rain, that I knew I loved you. After that day, I lost all sense of caution. All I could think of was the way you looked, standing there in the downpour in that hideous, shapeless old dress of yours, with your face glowing, as you declared that we might as well give in to Nature!”
“I only meant the rain!” I reminded him.
“Yes, you made that clear. But it was already too late for me. I wanted to go down on my knees and kiss your hem!” declared my husband extravagantly. “Me! Wanting to press my lips to the disgusting, threadbare hem of that horrible gown! And utterly tongue-tied at the thought of all the perfections it must have hidden. Now you know why your limitless supply of ugly dresses always drove me to the wall! They were a perpetual, stinging reminder of the moment you enslaved my heart. What a relief it was to get you out of them! And here you’ve found yet another! Do you breed them like rabbits?”
“I left my other gowns with Marguerite when I came to Switzerland. I feared a schoolteacher dressed by Madame Rullier might raise a few eyebrows!” But as I glanced down at my old gray dress, I did feel a keen twinge of regret. “I wish I’d had something else to wear tonight,” I concluded sadly.
“Oh please! Don’t apologize. This will do perfectly!” exclaimed my husband. He lifted up the offending hem and, yes, he did, he kissed it.
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