Why on earth had my father permitted me to read such muck? It had left me with an overactive, overromantic imagination, I thought furiously. As a girl, when I had imagined my future husband, I had always thought of someone dark and masterful, lord of some crumbling estate, hopefully with a mad wife tucked away in the attic for effect. I had never looked to marry a fair man, preferring instead to dream of someone mysterious and saturnine. No one was more surprised than I when I married a man with golden curls and bright blue eyes, a slender and graceful man, with a sleepy smile and beautifully-shaped hands.
Once I married him, I ceased to think of my girlhood heroes, carefully shelving the books I had once adored. I somehow felt it disloyal to Edward to read them and spend hours conjuring thoughts of other men. Not that Edward would have minded. He never troubled about such things. I sometimes wondered if he would have cared if I had taken a real lover, someone flesh and blood to replace him. But he never said and I never had the courage to ask. And I remained faithful to him, even in literature.
This time, though, after carefully shelving the other volumes, I kept back Wuthering Heights and carried it to my room. London was no cloud-scoured moor, and I was no Cathy, but at least I could thrill to Heathcliff in the privacy of my own bedchamber. That Yorkshire moor was a far sight more entertaining than the rest of my activities. I spent many quiet hours reading to Simon or taking the Ghoul for drives in the Park. Unfortunately, Simon often fell asleep just as I was getting to the interesting bits, and the Ghoul wanted only to talk about her current bout with constipation.
The high point of my week came when the boxes from the dressmakers were delivered. Messieurs Riche had outdone themselves. The costumes I had ordered were even better than I had anticipated, so daring in their simplicity, so eye-catching in their stark purity that I felt almost naked, even when Morag fastened the last button. There was not a single ruffle or bow or rosette to draw the eye—only the pure line of severely perfect tailoring and the elegant curve of a draped bustle.
Morag stepped back and said nothing, her gingery eyebrows higher than usual.
"Say what you like," I snapped. "I can smell your disapproval."
Her brow puckered in surprise. "Not me. I think it suits you."
I stared at her. Never, in all the time she had spent in my employ, had Morag ever complimented anything I had worn. The best I could hope for was a grunt of approval that I looked respectable. But open admiration was something entirely new.
"You do?" I turned, observing myself as many ways as possible in the cheval glass. "You don't think that it is too—"
"Oh, yes. That's why I like it," she said seriously.
Considering Morag's penchant for garish colours and blowsy feathers, I was not completely certain I should be pleased. But I was. Approval is pleasant, no matter from what quarter.
"But the others are just the same," I said, waving at the boxes yet to be opened. "And this is the only black one. All the rest are colours."
Morag shrugged. "It was a year last week, my lady. It is time enough to put off your mourning."
I stared at her reflection in the cheval glass. "Last week? You must be joking. Edward has not been dead a year—he cannot."
She said nothing but went to my escritoire and retrieved my diary. She opened it to the previous week and pointed.
I looked at the little boxes with their printed dates, trying to make sense of the numbers. "Good Lord," I said finally, "it was."
Morag continued to unpack the boxes, lifting rich violet and chocolate-brown silks from the crackling tissue.
"There is a note here. From the elder Monsieur Riche himself," she told me. I waved at her to read on. "He says you are an appalling creature to order the gowns without allowing him to fit them personally and he will come to Grey House whenever you like to alter them. He begs that in the meantime you will not tell anyone they came from his establishment. He does not like to think that anyone will know he let them go without a perfect fitting." She finished the note with an air of satisfaction. She had only learned to read at Aunt Hermia's refuge and the skill was one she was rightly proud of.
I nodded absently, admiring the set of a particularly luscious bottle-green sleeve. "I will reply later. He can come tomorrow if he likes, although I don't see why he bothers. You are just as handy with a needle as any of his soubrettes."
Morag preened herself a bit as she laid out the rest of the gowns, but I ignored her. How could I have let Edward's anniversary slip by unmarked? It was thoughtless and disloyal and I made a note in the book to take flowers to his grave soon. It did not seem enough, but I could not think of anything that would serve better.
I glanced again in the glass at my new reflection, but the bloom had gone off it a little.
"I will try the rest of them on later," I told Morag, her hands full of bottle-green and claret silks.
Her face fell, but her eyes went to the book still clutched in my hand and nodded. She left me then, surrounded by my extravagantly simple finery and I sat for a long time, uncomfortable both with the person I had been and the person I was finally becoming. Caught between the two of them, I felt rather lonely, as one often does with a new acquaintance.
I remembered quite suddenly a stream at Bellmont Abbey, broad and swift, rushing each spring with clear, icy water. There were only a few flat rocks between the banks and picking one's way among them was a tricky undertaking. Once, when I was perhaps seven, I had managed to follow my brother Benedick. I had skipped blithely across the rill, leaping from rock to rock. But when I reached the middle, surrounded by dark, tumbling water, I had frozen, too frightened either to move or to remain where I was. I hesitated, half turning back toward the bank I had started from. Benedick, who had reached the other bank, turned and saw my predicament.
"You've come too far to go back, Julia," he had shouted at me. "Be a man about it and come on."
And I had. He had been so calm, so matter-of-fact, that I had obeyed, slower and more cautiously than I had begun, it was true. But I had made it and Benedick had rewarded me with the first bite of the cherry tart he had stolen from Cook's larder. Be a man about it. Good advice then and now, I supposed. Doubtless Father would have made some Shakespearean reference to Caesar and the Rubicon, but the idea was the same. Begin as you mean to go on and do not look back. No sniveling, no quivering. Audeo.
I thought for a long time about what that might mean in my particular case. I could continue the investigation, leave off my mourning, express my opinions freely and with vigor. I could dance with whomever I chose, travel alone, to Italy or to Greece and beyond. I could take a lover if I wished, albeit discreetly, and unlike Lot's wife, I would not look back.
The question was, was I capable of it? I had always sympathized with Lot's wife. Serving as the family salt cellar for all eternity seemed a rather stiff price to pay for a little understandable curiosity. My own consequences would not be so extreme. Certain people would give up my acquaintance, I was sure. I would no longer be invited to the endless round of tea parties, card parties, music parties, dance parties that had bored me for years—parties, I reminded myself, to which I had scrupulously not been invited during my year of mourning. I would no longer be viewed as a suitable chaperone for young virgins in some quarters, but as young virgins were usually monumental bores, I was not unduly distressed. The people who would hold themselves too respectable to associate with me were the very people who had neglected my acquaintance during my widowhood. Widows were skeletons at the feast, dampening everyone else's pleasure, so they had not asked me.
But neither had they called on me privately. The visits and letters of encouragement that had deluged Grey House in the first weeks had trickled to nothing. My acquaintances in society would accept me readily enough back into their set if I wore grey and married again, someone dull and sober and not interesting or suitable enough for their own daughters. That was what was expected of me.
But what if I did the unexpected? People wou
ld whisper behind their hands about me, there might be one or two veiled references in newspapers—nothing actionable of course, but everyone would know who they meant. In short, I would lose a little respectability among those whose good opinion mattered not at all to me, and I would gain my freedom. It seemed a bargain I could live with.
I did not rouse until Morag returned, bearing a note written in a flowery hand and smelling strongly of attar of roses mixed with something else. Musk, I think.
"What is this?"
"It is a note," she said, exasperated. I knew why she was annoyed. I had been sitting so long she had been unable to dust my room and would have to explain to Aquinas why it had not been attended to. Like most of the staff, Morag made a point of avoiding Aquinas whenever possible. For a fundamentally gentle soul, he could be quite unnerving when roused.
I took the envelope and paper knife, slit the envelope and waved Morag away just to complete her annoyance. She always took a healthy interest in my correspondence. The signature I did not recognize, but the message was direct.
My dear Lady Julia,
I beg you will forgive my impudence at writing to you without an introduction. Our mutual friend, Nicholas Brisbane, begs me to write to you on his behalf as he is still too much unwell to undertake correspondence. He wishes to know if you will call upon him here at my house where he is convalescing. Naturally, you must come at your convenience. You are most welcome at any time.
It was signed with a scrolled flourish of flowery ink—Hortense de Bellefleur. I turned over the envelope, running my fingers over the heavily embossed crest. Not just an Hortense, but probably a Comtesse Hortense. Perhaps even a duchess. The note was gracious, but its syntax seemed foreign, French, if memory served. I had heard of the lady, of course, most of London had. But I could not place her correct title. That was not surprising, I supposed. She had been married so many times to so many different Continental aristocrats that it was impossible to remember whose title she was currently using.
But it was not her title that intrigued me. Brisbane had chosen to convalesce at her home, which led me to one extremely diverting question: what precisely was Brisbane's relationship with London's most notorious courtesan?
Later that afternoon, to my astonishment, Hortense de Bellefleur opened the door to her house herself. The address was a good one and the home so beautifully appointed that I could not believe that financial troubles precluded her from employing staff. The explanation was quick in coming.
"My dear Lady Julia," she enthused, wrapping her hands about mine and tugging me gently into the foyer. "I was so eager to meet you that I could not wait for my poor old Therese to hobble her way to the door and back. You will forgive my impatience, will you not?"
I had stared at her all through this unorthodox little speech as she flitted about me, taking my swansdown cape from my shoulders and putting it carefully aside with my umbrella. She was older than I had expected, well past forty.
In another woman this might have marked the end of real beauty, but not Hortense. Bellefleur, indeed! For she was a beautiful flower, not with the blowsy obviousness of a rose, but rather with the lush grace of a wild lily. The bones of her face were so eloquently sculpted that the years had merely honed them, mellowing them to something more arresting than mere loveliness. There was good humour there and kindness, as well as an elegance no Englishwoman could ever match. I took her in from her barely silvering dark hair to her pure, rose-tinted complexion, discreet jewelry to embroidered lace slipper tips, and I thought how easy it would be to hate this woman.
But in fact, it was impossible to hate Hortense. She chattered like a between-stairs maid, praising my costume—the fabric (heavy Lyons silk), the colour (bittersweet chocolate), and the artful cut. Morag had applied her needle discreetly to the hem, but nowhere else. In spite of Monsieur Riche's protests, the dresses required little alteration.
"A Frenchman has had his hands on this," she proclaimed, turning me around like a marionette. "You have an excellent eye, Lady Julia, far better than most Englishwomen. Are your people French?" she asked, searching my face for clues to a Gallic ancestor.
"Only distantly," I replied, thinking of Charles II's fractious mother, the dainty Queen Henrietta Maria. She was the closest French relative I had, being my eighth great-grandmother, but it seemed inappropriate to share this with Madame de Bellefleur.
She was smiling at me. "But of course! Even a drop of French blood would give you a certain élan that your compatriots lack. Blood always tells, madame, do you not think?"
Without waiting for a reply, she looped her arm through mine like a schoolgirl and led me down the hall.
"Now, you will forgive Brisbane," she advised. She pronounced his name "Brees-ban" rather than the usual "Brisbon," which from anyone else would have sounded backward. From her it was simply charming. She was so close to me that I could smell the same fragrant mixture that had scented her writing paper. Roses and musk, innocence and earthiness. I wondered if it was a metaphor for the lady herself.
"He is in a sulky mood. He did not want to come to me," she confided, her voice low. "He is stubborn, like all men, but like all men, he needs pampering when he is unwell. They are all little boys at heart, don't you think?" she asked, nudging me familiarly.
Again, I did not reply, but this time it was because I simply could not think of anything appropriate to say. It seemed insulting to comment that she should know, but I did not doubt that she did know far more than I on the subject. I smiled instead.
She patted my hand. "You will ignore him and I shall make you very welcome. I do not often get callers, and I am so charmed that you have come."
Her eyes were long and thickly lashed, the startling blue of a pansy. The expression in them was utterly sincere, and I realized that her attraction was not just her actual prettiness. It was this sincerity, this gift of making a person believe they were utterly necessary to her happiness. I wondered if the dustman felt this way when she looked at him.
But that was a cynical thought. By her reputation, Madame de Bellefleur had set herself beyond the boundaries of most of polite society. Gentlemen would call often, ladies almost never. I found myself wondering if I was the first, and I felt a little stab of pity for this charming and perhaps slightly lonely woman.
She threw open a door and gestured for me to enter. My first impression was one of serenity. The colours were soft, as were the lights, and it occurred to me only later that these were the most flattering for an aging beauty.
But for now they served to soothe Brisbane's eyes, I realized as he rose slowly to greet me, still wearing his smoked spectacles. I would have waved him back, but there was something ferocious about the set of his jaw that stayed me. He was still struggling with the notion of his own weakness and I was not surprised. I loathed being ill. How much more must a strong, otherwise healthy man hate his infirmity?
I smiled at him and offered my hand. "Mr. Brisbane. I am so glad to see you up and about. I hope you are well on the way to recovery."
I was rather proud of that little speech. I did try to make it sound casual, but the truth was, I had rehearsed it in the carriage all the way from Grey House to Primrose Hill.
He resumed his seat after I had taken mine, a lovely little Empire piece upholstered in pale blue bee-embroidered silk. He did not look as bad as I had feared. He had shaved and his hair was orderly, though still untrimmed. Other than his pallor and the darkened lenses and a few lines still bracketing his mouth, there was little trace of his ordeal. It seemed incredible that a man could recover so thoroughly from the wreck that Brisbane had been a mere week before. I made up my mind to ferret into a few of Val's medical texts when I returned home to learn more about Brisbane's condition.
"My lady?" he said archly. I jumped, realizing with a dart of embarrassment that I had been staring.
"I am sorry. Building castles in Spain, as my grandmother used to say," I told him with a fatuous smile.
His mou
th turned down slightly at the corners. He seemed guarded, although whether because of his condition or Madame de Bellefleur's hovering silken presence I could not tell.
"I am recovering," he said at last. "Thank you for the basket of fruit. It was kindly done."
I started, thinking of the last place I had seen that basket, tumbled on the floor with cherries spilling out, crushed juicily underfoot as Brisbane leaned into me, his arm laced about my waist. Deliberately, I pushed the thought away.
"Think nothing of it, I beg you." I hesitated, a bit reluctant to produce the Psalter in Madame de Bellefleur's presence. As if reading my thoughts, Brisbane lifted his eyes to the lady.
"Fleur, I think Lady Julia would like a cup of tea. Do you think that Therese—"
"Of course! I shall go and supervise her myself." She gave me a conspiratorial smile. "Therese is old and very set in the French way of doing things. Sometimes her tea is not to Brisbane's liking. His taste in coffee is that of a Turk, but he is a proper Scotsman about his tea. Have yourselves a pleasant tête-à-tête and I will return in a little while with refreshment."
She withdrew and I watched Brisbane watch her leave. His eyes lingered, but not hotly, and I found myself wondering again the precise nature of their connection.
"I appreciate your willingness to come here, my lady," he said, his voice pitched too low for her to hear through the closed door. "Not every lady would feel comfortable calling at so notorious a house."
"Is it notorious?" I asked him with a nonchalance that fooled neither of us. "I had no idea. I had only heard Madame de Bellefleur spoken of as a great beauty, and I am glad of the chance to make her acquaintance."
His lips lifted very slightly, almost but not quite a smile. "You are a better liar than I would have thought. But thank you for that."
Lady Julia Grey Bundle Page 16