Judith Ivory Read online

  The present earl yanked off his trousers and stepped into a tubful of hot water, blissfully lauding to himself the miracles of modern plumbing. His secretary managed to slip upstairs with paper and pen a few minutes after that. Submerged in three feet of water and with a fat cigar between his teeth, Graham puffed out a severe letter on profligate spending to his daughter, then instructed that a ten-pound note be included with the letter. He knew that lecturing Claire, then giving her money, was contradictory, but he didn’t know how else to handle the girl or, for that matter, her brother.

  He knew he was not the model father. He was hardly a father at all, in fact. He had a tendency to forget the children—a thought that gave him pause. Frowning and watching smoke rings drift over the tub and wisp to nothing, he tried to remember if he’d mentioned them yet to Rosalyn.

  He’d better do so soon. Such large things began to seem like secrets when they went too long unspoken. Rosalyn was already up in arms that he had a widowed cousin who could track him down at a party. Why hadn’t he told her he had such a cousin? she had wanted to know this morning.

  “I didn’t know myself.”

  “What were you talking to her about at the end of the terrace?”

  He’d rolled his eyes, amazed that she would pay attention to this. “Are you jealous?”

  “Should I be?”

  He expelled a quick breath, having to feign exasperation. “For God’s sake, Rosalyn, she’s a pale little thing with frizzy hair and crooked teeth.”

  Luckily, lightning didn’t strike a man down for lying with fragments of reassembled truth.

  The pale, frizzy, little crooked-toothed woman aroused a mild but persistent curiosity in Graham. She interested him—an interest he was in no hurry to share with Rosalyn. He couldn’t have explained to her or anyone else why he was intrigued by the widow. She wasn’t very pretty. She wasn’t even very nice. Perhaps it was having the secret of dirty pictures between them. Or all those mounds of swaying, slithering black silk. The steel hoops under that silk had to be so thin, an expensive undergarment bought by Henry, he reminded himself. Her skirts jiggled and shuddered at the slightest movement she made. Graham dropped her into a category, hoping this would sum her up and sort her out—she was what the French would call une beauté mystique. A woman with no obvious beauty who managed by some quirk of personality to be mysteriously appealing all the same. Take away that smug air, those fancy hoops and full skirts, and what would you have?

  Graham was laughing at himself as he stepped out of the tub and picked up a large towel. He found his clothes laid out on the bed. He was fastening the bottom buttons of his vest when his valet came in carrying a handful of watches. As the man bent to thread a watch chain, Graham took the whole lot from him. “Thank you, John. I’ll take care of the rest myself. Go down and tell Royce to open up the shed, will you? Oh, and tell him to stay and mind it till I come down. You know how people are.”

  Graham moved to stand before a wide, lead-mullioned window twice as tall as himself. In this light, he set a watch that had stopped, then stood there winding it, absently looking out the window. His eyes fixed on a curious little scene taking place outside, three stories below him. A large family was posing among the statuary on his back lawn before a man with a gadget that was becoming more and more common. The man had his head bent down under a black cloth as he looked through a box on stick legs. A portable camera. There were men who took these around, traveling in wagons full of chemicals, making pictures inside these cameras with a smear of glop on a sheet of glass.

  Beyond the photographer and his subjects, Graham could see his own gardener’s shed where he kept his fireworks, much as he had kept firecrackers in Henry’s years ago—happily, he had not yet burned down his own shed. Royce, the gardener, and John, his manservant, waited dutifully outside, guarding a shack full of explosives, including a box of magnesium chunks. Graham quickly tucked in the rest of his watches. The group who’d witnessed the display at Rosalyn’s house had told a few other people who’d missed it. A larger group was waiting at Rosalyn’s to see whatever he might choose to take back with him. This positively delighted Graham.

  He picked up his coat, slipping it on while trotting down the rear stairs. On his way to the shed, he decided to have a good look at that camera-thing first.

  When Graham Wessit returned, Submit was dismayed to discover he’d brought two more people with him, as if the house weren’t busy enough. Another two dozen human beings had arrived by mid-afternoon. Carriages kept rolling up. Vehicles pulled into Mrs. Schild’s drive with the frequency of bees to a hive. The place had begun to swarm with activity. Tea, an opera, then a late-night supper were planned, invitations to which Submit politely declined. People were actually arriving with two and three changes of clothes. To this assembly, Graham Wessit added one photographer and his helper. It seemed the earl was about to take pictures of everything. He was full of enthusiasm and fascination for a newfangled camera. She couldn’t get his attention, try as she might.

  She followed him and the photographer out onto the front lawn. The only way to get his attention there, however, would have been to stand in front of the camera lens. The earl, directing the photographer, wanted pictures of the house. Pictures of Rosalyn. Pictures of Tilney, the blond man, from this morning, who, after the first photo, wanted his image to appear on every photographic plate. Pictures of the cats: Rosalyn traveled with eight. Pictures of the earl himself. Graham Wessit, always agreeable, took pictures of virtually anything that would stay in one place. Submit found herself always moving to stay at his back. She wanted to talk, not be in his photographs.

  A growing group moved with the earl to the back terrace. Two neighbors came over to watch. Submit followed, thinking he would soon give up. But he kept inventing more pictures, while discoursing with a vagabond photographer on the subject of light. More people, the postman, two maids, the cook, and the scullery, were drawn to follow the sight.

  And he was a sight. In the late afternoon sunlight, Graham Wessit removed his coat. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and bent over the camera, taking instruction. He sported a bright red vest that made the sleeves of his shirt look even whiter, his coloring all the more dark. His face and forearms, Submit realized, were deeply colored by the sun. His wrists and flexors were corded with veins and solid with muscle. He had a broader, stronger physique than she had imagined. He was a dandiprat with the height of a Titan and the build of a rugby fullback.

  And the face of a Byron: Submit was caught short as he straightened up, his eyes lifting over the heads of a group sitting in front of him on the grass. Submit, on the terrace behind them, felt an odd rush. She was the center of his attention for a moment. He smiled and mimed an offer. Would she be willing to pose? His open palm indicated a raised flower bed that had gone to poppies. Submit was caught off guard, embarrassed at being caught staring. She frowned and shook her head no. Flustered, she gave up. She went inside bewildered, wondering why he would want a picture of an unphotogenic woman standing in a patch of floppy, wild weeds.

  More than an hour later, as the sun was finally setting, she heard people in the front parlor. At last. He would have to stop taking pictures; he was losing daylight. She went toward the sound of voices. When she opened the parlor door, he was on the other side of it—and so was the idiotic camera. The earl was moving people into position for a group photograph. He moved a man by the arm, then took Mrs. Schild by the waist, picking her up and setting her on the back of a sofa. She had to grab the mantel of the fireplace to keep from falling backward. Everyone shrieked in delight. Submit walked into this only to find herself taken by the shoulder.

  He sat her into a chair, then did a double take. “Lady Motmarche.” He was surprised to find her sitting suddenly in the midst of his picture. He recovered smoothly. “How nice. You have to sit very still.”

  She got up immediately. “I would like to talk to you.”

  “Talk,” he said.

  She foll
owed him over to the camera, which stood on stilts. By now he had the photographer posing in the picture. He was operating the camera himself. He ducked under its black cloth. Submit was left talking to a hooded head and left hand. As the hand offered her a box of matches, she noticed it had three rings on it.

  “Here. You know what you’re doing. Step back when you light that stuff on the tray.”

  His right hand moved a tray toward her. This hand wore two more rings, one an arabesque of rubies that wrapped around like a red snake.

  Submit’s eyes dropped down to the red vest hanging out so brilliantly from beneath the camera’s black cloth. His vest, like the one last night, was dripping with gold watch chains.

  “I would like,” she said, “to look into your face when I speak to you.”

  He laughed. “Fine. Come under here.”

  Everyone in the room laughed.

  Submit drew back. She spoke more softly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Can you see me later?”

  Graham Wessit lowered his voice as well. “Where would you like to meet?”

  Her skin prickled. “I—um—” For a moment, she couldn’t speak.

  Behind her, the photographer’s helper took the matches from her hand and whistled loudly. “Ay! She’s after your cockles, ya’ know. Ain’t she a funny one to flock after yooo—”

  The room exploded in light. Submit saw spots. She breathed in a smell of burnt chemicals—magnesium. It was foul. The air was thick with smoke. When she focused on Graham Wessit again, he had pulled his head out from under the cloth. He threw her a brief, puzzled frown.

  Submit’s patience left. “Maybe I should go—”

  “Don’t be sensitive. He was just having fun.”

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  His frown darkened. “Then maybe you should.”

  “Should what?”

  “Go.” He added, “And take everything you brought with you.”

  The box. She’d wanted to ask about the box. But she said instead, “Fine. Maybe I should. Since I truly don’t know how to talk to a man who, on ten fingers, can wear five rings. You are absurd, do you know that?”

  She didn’t even wait for his reaction. She walked out.

  Chapter 9

  Graham was more wary of Submit Channing-Downes after that. Though she didn’t bother him anymore, neither did she leave as he’d suggested. Henry’s wife became Rosalyn’s houseguest, and not just for the night. The day after the incident over the camera, a load of trunks arrived—all Submit’s worldly, or at least undisputed, goods. It looked as though the widow were here to stay, and Graham could make neither heads nor tails of how this had come about.

  Henry’s abrasive, enigmatic, strangely appealing little wife took up residence under the same roof as his own mistress. This seemed incredible to Graham, a situation too prickly, too strangely interesting, for him to do anything but circle. Then, as the real and bland events of day-to-day life made their inroads, the widow’s presence became almost theoretical. Only once, after the day of the camera, did Graham actually see her in the house, and then only from the back. He didn’t even realize who it was until she was quite well past—he recognized her by a distinctively brisk churning of taffeta. This characteristic sound was apparently something others noticed as well. The Black Fairy, Rosalyn called her. “An eerie one, that one,” she would say as Submit fluttered overhead on a staircase, disappearing with all the rustle and flurry of great, substantial dragonfly wings.

  Henry’s widow was not just odd, Graham decided, she was otherworldly. Everyone in the house agreed. He was glad he had a more fun-loving and down-to-earth woman for his own.

  A few days later, he was buttoning his pants, watching his fun-loving, down-to-earth woman fight her way through a huge tangle of striped Indian muslin. Rosalyn had put the bottom of her dress over her head a moment ago. Now, from the inside, she was trying to find her way to the top. An arm poked through one sleeve. Still no head. Beyond the parlor door, Graham could hear an annoying racket. Carpenters were dismantling the façade in the ballroom that had been erected for Rosalyn’s gala party last week. Decorators were coming in today to paint over the walls. Her house was in a state. It had taken an act of premeditation for Graham to enter it this morning.

  All for naught, so far as Graham was concerned. He was going to be late for an appointment with his lawyers. He had come here with the express intention of making himself and Rosalyn blissfully content for a few minutes. Instead, he and Rosalyn had fallen into what had amounted to little more than animal copulation. The rhythm and aesthetics of the whole thing had been roughly as pleasant as the saws and hammers grinding away in the background. Graham couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong.

  Rosalyn’s head popped through her dress. Muslin dropped as far as her crinoline. It sat awkwardly in a bunch around her waist for a moment, then she shook the skirt down. Her dress was rumpled, but muslin was supposed to look that way. Graham glanced down at himself. The knees of his trousers were covered in red lint—bits of wool from her new carpet.

  “My man is in the kitchen,” he said. “When you are presentable, I’ll call him. My trousers are a mess.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever you wish.”

  He looked at her, annoyed that she took a distant tone with him. The ungrateful creature. When he had just braved an army of servants and carpenters to make love—

  No, he had just nailed Rosalyn, twice for good measure, in her front parlor. Conceivably, neither of them felt very satisfied. Not only had the outside world been a rattling nuisance, the room inside had been no great help. Among tiny tables, stiff-backed chairs, and a skirted piano, there had been no place to do the deed properly. They had ended up on the floor. He’d taken his coat off to be comfortable, then Rosalyn had wanted his vest and shirt off as well. Her hands had a generally wonderful and unholy interest in the muscles of his belly. But now his elbows and forearms itched from rubbing on the thick, cut wool of the rug. Rosalyn couldn’t be much better off. He would not have traded the irritating itch on his arms for the same feel on his bare ass.

  Graham fastened his collar with one hand, while digging down a chair cushion with the other for his bow tie. “I shouldn’t have come,” he said.

  “You should have come yesterday.”

  “With your servants getting into every room, cleaning every damned possession?”

  “They weren’t cleaning every damned possession.”

  Graham frowned at her, then asked, “Do all American women curse?”

  “I was under the impression English gentlemen did not.”

  “They restrain themselves. In front of ladies.”

  “Damn your English snot!” She threw a cushion at him. “The only time I’m not a lady is in here, and you love it!”

  That wasn’t quite true—at the moment he hated it. But she had made her point. He grew sullen.

  Her voice broke. “You could have come the day before.”

  “I was here, but I ended up playing croquet with Tilney. You were indisposed, as I recall. Feeding the cats, all ten million of them—you and the Black Fairy.” Graham was a little shocked to hear this mean name come out his own mouth.

  “You wanted to play—beat—Tilney.”

  “I didn’t.” He did. It was always hard not to clobber Tilney when he made some foolish challenge. Graham had been trouncing Tilney at nearly everything since he was ten years old.

  “You did!”

  “Maybe I did.” Some of Graham’s anger abated. “Why does Lady Motmarche feed your cats?”

  Rosalyn was taken aback at this change of subject. “Out of gratitude, I suppose.”

  “For what?”

  “Well for—I don’t know. She needed a place to stay. I convinced her I didn’t mind her being here. It seemed the right thing to do.”

  Graham was taken aback himself for several seconds. Then he gave a short laugh. “Yes.” He was humbled once more by Rosalyn’s directness. She was both mean and kind wi
thout worry for subtlety, unlike the widow who was so subtle and aloof that she was entirely undecipherable. “Well, I’m glad she’s finally let someone get in close enough to help.”

  “I thought if I didn’t, you might.” Rosalyn paused. “Did you offer her the flat?”

  Graham turned his back. He began to tie his tie as he faced a wall mirror. “Why would you even ask?”

  “She inquired about it yesterday, asking Tilney if it were a proper flat, one you actually rented.”

  It was, though Graham had occasionally been generous with the flat on Haymoore Street. He had allowed “close friends” to stay in it if they needed to. Several of those close friends, women, had stayed for extended periods of time.

  “I mentioned it to her,” he said, after what was becoming an awkward pause. He gave the tie a sharp twist and pulled it through. “I don’t have a tenant for it right now, you know.”

  In the mirror, she raised one eyebrow at him. “I know. Just see that you don’t.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “What? I’m not allowed to sleep with anyone else?” A little more harshly than he’d intended, he said, “And what about your damned husband? It seems to me you might just crawl into bed with him every fortnight or so.”

  Rosalyn’s look softened, as did her tone. “Do you want me to stop sleeping with my husband, Gray? I can, you know.”

  Graham could think of only one way she might put her husband off. Only one legal way—and it was extremely legal. He had a quick, horrible presentiment of himself in court again, this time as co-respondent, the adulterous earl. He sighed and let the whole thing drop.

  What hypocrisy, he thought. He wasn’t even sure he minded that she slept with her husband. He only minded that she should try to dictate to him how he use his own flat. Lord, they were both frazzled. Too busy. Too deprived. Both his life and hers had conspired against the physical side of their relationship for more than ten days—Graham had counted backward in surprise just this morning. This was why he had roared into the house, found Rosalyn, then dragged her into the first free room he could find. But now that they were finished, he was feeling more unsettled than before.