by L. J. Greene
Cresswickham took his second Americano. Alice had gone white, white as the walls. Mancini lit another cigarette.
“You should rest before dinner, Alice,” Cresswickham said.
She smoothed down her skirt. “I’m not tired, Reggie.”
“Yes, you are. In fact, you look like you’re getting one of your migraines.”
“I’ll go with you, darling,” Mancini said, and touched her shoulder. She flinched under his fingertips, and twisted her head to look up at him. I could see her pulse flickering in the curve of her throat.
Cresswickham said, “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Betts will go with her. That is his job, after all.”
From his corner, Betts stood up.
Alice turned back and burst out, “But I tell you, Reggie, I’m perfectly well, I’m not in the least—”
“All these hysterics,” he said, his voice thin and cutting, “will simply make your headache worse.”
She flushed deeply and stood, nodding at me without looking me in the eye. “Good afternoon, Mr. Fox.” She left the room, both her perfume and Betts trailing after her.
“My sister is delicate,” Cresswickham said. “I trust you won’t do her a disservice in your article.”
“The ladies,” I said, and hesitated. “Well, they do come down with headaches. I doubt my readership would be interested.” I took it from the flicker of Cresswickham’s eyelids that he approved of my tactic. I had an opportunity then, so I took it. Like Alice had pointed out earlier, no one thinks twice about a reporter being pushy. “What’s the story with Betts? Bodyguard?”
“Mr. Betts is engaged to attend to Lady Alice’s needs. Leo, won’t you sit down?” Mancini moved slow as the smoke trailing from his Gauloise, but sat himself in Alice’s vacated chair. “I wonder, Mr. Fox,” Cresswickham continued. “Would you do me the honor of staying to dinner?”
“Why, I…” I didn’t know what to do. Stay, and find out more? I knew what Mancini wanted, which was me out of there, safely stowed in the Chateau, like the porcelain shepherdess in the glass case behind him. That image made up my mind for me. “I’d love to,” I said. “And please, like I said, call me Cole.”
“Excellent. Cole. I believe you might have an interest in the more obscure pieces of my collection.”
“Reggie—” Mancini said, warning in his tone. But his voice died in his throat at a glance from the Englishman.
“I surely would love to see them, Reginald.” All pals here, my grin said, and it didn’t falter under his contemplative, pallid gaze. “Say, though—I’ve been here about an hour, and I had a cab booked to pick me up again. He’s probably here by now.”
“Leo will manage it,” Cresswickham said, without looking at the man. Mancini rose, crushed out his cigarette, and left the room. In a moment, I faintly heard the front door open and close.
I was alone with the Englishman.
Chapter 7
Lord Cresswickham continued: “This house was the least ghastly I saw in the neighborhood. There’s one further down the hill I’m told was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but it looks like nothing more than a concrete block to me. Your American architects have a very different sensibility to ours.”
“Oh, well; they’re not all Frank Lloyd Wrights. I prefer Craig Ellwood, myself,” I said.
“Quite.” Cresswickham looked like he didn’t know who Ellwood was, and wasn’t going to admit to it. Score one for Yankee Doodle, I thought.
So I had the grand tour, wandering around the bottom floor of the mansion with Lord Cresswickham, hearing his opinions about late eighteenth century craftsmen and why one portrait of a horse-faced broad was better than another. He’d shipped over part of his collection with him from the mother country when he’d decided to come to the States for a few years. Couldn’t bear the idea of all the modernity and crassness, he said, and a man has to be comfortable where he lives. I wondered why he’d come Stateside at all if he hated it so much, but I couldn’t disagree with his reasoning. I didn’t know what was going to happen between Mancini and me once this night was over, but I sure didn’t fancy moving back into a shoebox.
I didn’t see another soul during the tour, and we ended up back in the grand foyer at the bottom of the staircase. It was dark outside. Someone had switched on the chandelier, and it threw muted light into all corners of the room.
“You mentioned before—entertainments,” Cresswickham said, the word over-pronounced, each “t” ringing out like silverware tapping on a champagne flute.
We were getting to it at last, the real reason he’d asked me to stay. “Yes?” I asked, giving away nothing.
“One does, when one travels, hope to better understand the ways of the natives.”
I had a choice: I could string him out, make him state it plainly; or I could ingratiate myself and go easy on him. I decided on the latter. “I’d be happy to show you what Los Angeles has to offer, Reginald.”
“Good man.” He reached out for my arm, but his hand hovered an inch away from it, as though he couldn’t bear to touch me. I moved, and my arm brushed against his palm. He pulled it back quickly like I’d zinged him, and gestured up the staircase. “You can dress for dinner in one of the rooms upstairs.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have—”
“You’re about Leo’s size. I’ll ask him to bring you something.”
I kept my nerve and mounted the staircase on the left side. It felt imposing and mountainous as I trawled upward, very aware of Cresswickham behind me as I walked. The bannister and wainscoting on either side were made of a dark, almost black wood, but the stairs themselves were cream-colored marble. Our steps echoed through the foyer and the back of my neck prickled. At the top I paused on the landing and looked over. “Hell of a drop,” I said with a forced laugh. “Even just a tumble down the stairs would break a man’s neck, I bet.”
“Indeed,” the Englishman said, and the look he gave me read clear as day: he was giving serious consideration to a shove, then and there.
But I moved away from the edge, and the moment broke. Perhaps, I thought, I’d only imagined it.
I let myself be directed to a room. It was massive, about the same size as my entire bungalow. A preposterous four-poster hulked against the wall, big enough to bed a whole family. A matching wardrobe took up about a third of another wall, and three ceiling-to floor windows looked out over the back of the property. I could have seen for miles if not for the encroaching dark. There was a huge mirror on the remaining wall, reflecting the darkening sky.
Cresswickham left me, and I made my ablutions and waited, lit up with nerves. Presently there was a knock, and Mancini came in without waiting for my say-so. He avoided looking at me as he hung up a shirt and dinner jacket in the ugly wardrobe.
No doubt he would’ve left the room in silence too, if I hadn’t opened my mouth.
“Hey,” I said, and that one word stopped him in his tracks at the door, his back to me. He looked down and to the side. I could see him only in quarter-profile. “I could use some help getting dressed. Is that your job?”
He remained motionless for a moment before he quietly shut the door, and turned to look at me. I quavered under his glare. Those brows were back in force, and his body was taut. This was the Mancini I knew, not the mute objet d’art gliding here and there at Lord Cresswickham’s beck and call. I’d been angry about his lies and curious as to why he’d told them, but Mancini—Mancini was enraged.
“So you couldn’t leave it alone,” he hissed, and he was on me before I knew it, bunching up my shirt-collar in his fist and pushing me back over the dresser. It made it hard to breathe.
“Let me explain,” I wheezed. “Come on, Mancini, don’t hit me; it’ll only make for awkward questions if I’m bleeding all over the dinner table.”
He let me go and stepped back an inch or two. “You reckless little fool. You don’t even know what a fool you are, how much danger you’re putting us in by being here.”
There
it was again, that ambiguous pronoun. I took off my tie and unbuttoned my collar to give myself room to breathe. “When you say us, who exactly do you mean?”
“I mean you and me. And…”
“And Alice?”
Mancini gave a great sigh and sat on the end of the bed. “And Alice. I’m worried about her.”
I’d noticed it too, that subtle strangeness about her. It was as though she were wavering on the edge of a great wall, trying to decide which way to fall to find safety, and terrified of a plunge into nothingness instead.
“What’s going on here, Mancini? None of it makes sense to me.”
“Why, we’ve been acquired, Alice and I, just like one of Reggie’s antiques. We’re part of his collection. The pièces de résistance, in fact.”
We didn’t have long—three quarters of an hour, maybe, before dinner would be served and we’d be expected to make an appearance downstairs. So I sat next to him on the foot of the bed, and he told me as fast as he could, brushing over details, leaving out facts and having to go back to retell parts. It went something like this.
Mancini told me he’d led a quiet childhood, born to a wealthy Philadelphian family who lost everything in the Black Tuesday crash. They recovered, although they’d never been the same afterwards and his father had died before the war started. It was during the war Mancini met Cresswickham, after they were both injured. They first set eyes on each other in a mobile hospital and had become friendly, then more than friends. “The desperation of the time, you know,” he said. “In other circumstances, perhaps we would never have hit it off. Of course, in other circumstances we never would have met.”
I pressed his hand when he bit his lip, like it was all too much for him.
“I went back to England with him,” he continued. “I was overcome by how elegant he was, how wealthy, how powerful—and he wanted me. It was flattering, do you see? But he was infatuated with me, had to have me. Keep me. Display me, even. He would have parties for his degenerate friends, and dress me—show me off—he liked to dangle me in front of others and then snatch me away.”
I tried to picture it, this proud, aloof fellow allowing himself to be treated that way. “You shoulda clocked him the first time he tried it,” I said. “Making you perform like—like—like I don’t know what.” I knew exactly what, but I didn’t plan on saying it. It was hard enough for him to tell me his humiliation without me remarking on it.
But he shook his head at my revulsion. “It wasn’t so bad, not then. There was no pain, at least, and he lavished me with everything money could buy. But I tired of it before he’d tired of me. When I told him I needed my freedom, that was when things changed. He can’t bear the thought of anyone or anything being out of his control, not once he’s declared his ownership. He’s spent hundreds of thousands on art, heirlooms, jewelry—on me, and on Alice. He’s left nothing but ruined lives behind him.”
Why couldn’t he just leave, I asked; go back to Philly, or stay here in LA, but either way, leave Cresswickham? He gave two reasons.
One was the money, and I couldn’t hold that against him. I felt the pull of it myself when I thought about the ease and comfort it had brought over the last month.
His other reason wasn’t so ignoble: he was able to send help home to his mother, who was unwell and in need of care. I could relate to that, and Mancini had previously been encouraging when I’d mentioned to him that I wanted to help out my old Ma.
“And then,” he sighed, “there’s Alice. She’s been his ward since their parents’ death in the Blitz. And although she’s a grown woman now, he’s got her tied to him—financially, socially. He’s molded her and he’s taken his time about it, turning her into a shell of the person she once was. I’m terribly afraid for her, I don’t mind telling you. Afraid for her mental state. She’s frayed, and it won’t take much for her to snap. Then he’ll be able to store her away, and never have to give her up.”
And so they were both flies caught in the web.
“Why’d you lie to me?” I asked curiously, once I’d ruminated over it.
He fiddled with his cuff. “What do you mean?”
“About having a wife, money of your own?”
“I never said that.”
I let it pass. “You called each other darling.” He gave me a quizzical look, so I added, “When I arrived, you and Alice. Darling this and darling that. You seem fond of each other.”
“Why, yes. We are fond of each other. It helps, actually, to feel kinship with my fellow prisoner. But she’s like a sister to me, if that’s what has you worried.”
I twisted my mouth. I didn’t want him thinking me jealous. “The bungalow, the things you’ve given me—where does that money come from?”
He spread his hands. “From him. I have an allowance. Reggie pays me generously, and I pay you.”
“Also generously,” I noted.
“We may have different definitions,” he said sardonically. “In any case, if you’d rather not take it—”
“Wait just a minute, now. No one said anything about things changing between us. But can’t you squirrel some of that dough away? Can’t we make room for Alice at the Chateau?” I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to curtail our lovemaking or share the bungalow—my bungalow—with anyone else, but the situation seemed dire.
He gave a pained, incredulous smile. “I suppose when one lives a simple sort of life, one becomes accustomed to it. But I certainly couldn’t ask Lady Alice Cresswickham to live at Chateau Marmont, in a two-bedroom bungalow. Besides, Betts would never agree.”
I didn’t see what Betts had to do with anything, but I was struck with an idea. “But look here,” I said, “I can help you. I can help both of you. I can play the horses.” Jimmy’s tips were still showing up occasionally, although there were few real outsiders coming home these days.
“Yes, I thought about the horses too. For a moment, I wondered if it might be a way out. But it’s a fool’s dream, isn’t it? You might make your booze money on the ponies, but you certainly haven’t made a fortune.” I frowned. It was true, but it still cut. Mancini went on, “Besides, Reggie would come after us, and no matter how much we might make here and there, he will always have more resources. In any case, Alice deserves so much more. She’s kind and good and beautiful; she has a title. She could marry very well, if only Reggie would let her. You don’t know the things he’s done to her. To me.” He dropped his head into his hand. “He—he makes her watch sometimes.”
I felt a horrible thrill run through me at the idea. “What kind of things?”
But he just shook his head. “If only he would get sick and die. He’s even written me into his will. Of course, it’s another ploy to keep me with him—the longer I stay, the more I get. He’s left me this house, and his New York digs, as long as I’m still living with him when he dies. Said he didn’t want Alice lumbered with American property, and of course, she’ll get their estate, Holford Hall. So you see, if he died…But he won’t die. He’s healthy as a horse.”
Chapter 8
I leaned into him. “I shouldn’t’ve made that crack before, asking you to dress me. It was a sour thing to say.” I slid my fingers through his hair, and pulled his tired mouth to mine.
Against my lips, he murmured, “You were right, what you said that day, and so long ago it seems now. I do give a damn about you.”
He pulled open his tie and started to unbutton his shirt, but I grabbed his hands. “We don’t have time.”
“I know,” he said, getting a hand free and pulling at my clothes. “I know.”
“The door is unlocked.”
“I don’t care.”
“If he finds us, he’ll punish you. I can’t have that on my conscience.”
He froze for a moment, and then retreated right off the bed to stand by the wardrobe, refastening his shirt collar. I felt lousy for reminding him of the consequences. It occurred to me the fellow was only trying to assert himself, shore up a little powe
r and control where he could, and here I was turning him down.
Well, I was feeling more charitable having heard his backstory.
“Mancini,” I said. “Hey, would you—Mancini, would you look at me?” He wouldn’t, so I went to him and sidled in close. He was never one for sweet-talking before he jumped me all those times in the bungalow, so I followed suit and slid an arm around his waist. “Aw, come on. Kiss me,” I breathed, and rubbed my nose against his cheek.
He was trying to stay himself, to hold off, but when I cleaved my body to his I could feel him solid against my thigh. I let out a moan, and that’s what lit the fuse. He pushed me back against the wardrobe door, kissing me violently, sucking at my mouth until I went limp and pliable, the way he liked me.
In fact, I realized, I was limp all over, never mind that I was breathing as heavy as he was and felt just as enthusiastic. To disguise the problem, I dropped to my knees.
“Like this,” I urged. “Not so messy.”
He had no arguments. On the contrary, he was impatient to get in my mouth and yanked at a tuft of my hair to make me open wider. He kept his fingers wrapped up tight in my hair, pulling until he forced water from my eyes, and drove in deep to make me gag. My splutters and coughs only encouraged him, and I grabbed him close just as often as I tried to pull away. Not so messy, I’d said, yet there I was slobbering all over his pants and tears soaking into my collar. Well, I was getting used to being wrong about things.
He was rough on me, but I wanted him like that. Preferred him like that, not the submissive servant he’d transformed into under Cresswickham’s rule. But I thought I’d suffocate right at the end, when he got himself full down my throat and pushed my nose up hard against his belly. He gushed into me ’til I felt I was drowning, but the satisfaction I heard in his long sigh was fair compensation.
When he let me go I fell back on my heels, hacking and clearing my throat. He leaned over me, one hand on the wardrobe, affection in his half-smile. “Tidy me away,” he said softly, so I kissed the tip of his spent cock and tucked him neatly back in his trousers.