Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  With a favoring wind, the ship he had boarded at Southampton more than a month ago had crossed the channel in about twelve hours. In Calais the next morning he had taken the post chaise to Paris, and found cheap lodgings on one of the narrow streets east of the Grand-Châtelet prison.

  He had met Yvette his second day in Paris. After crossing the Seine to a theater on the city's Left Bank, he had bought a ticket for an afternoon performance of Moliére's Tartuffe. He already knew the play, and he had thought that his knowledge of French, acquired from a tutor even before he went to Oxford, would be adequate. But all the actors delivered their lines rapidly, and some of them spoke in a patois unintelligible to him. He was about to leave in disgust when he noticed the woman seated across the aisle, with a vacant seat beside her.

  She was richly dressed in a dark blue velvet gown and plumed, matching hat. She was not too young—thirty or a bit past. And she looked lonely. Christopher settled back in his seat.

  At the end of the performance, watching her from the corner of his eye, he managed to move out in the aisle just in time to collide with her. He caught her arm as if to steady her.

  "Oh, madame! Are you hurt? Forgive my clumsiness."

  She looked up into a face so handsome it was almost beautiful. "It is all right, monsieur."

  "But I am sure I trod on your foot."

  "A little. It does not hurt."

  He looked earnestly down into her face. Although her nose was a trifle too long, it was a reasonably attractive face, set with large and vulnerable-looking brown eyes. He said, "But you must allow me to make amends. Allow me to at least see you to your carriage."

  She allowed him. In the bronze-colored light of late afternoon they waited until her carriage, one of a dozen or so moving along the edges of a cobblestoned square, stopped in front of them. A footman as well as a coachman, both in scarlet livery, sat on the box. Before the footman could descend, Christopher opened the carriage door for her.

  She said from the carriage window, "Thank you, monsieur."

  He smiled. "The pleasure and the privilege were mine—all too briefly enjoyed, I might add."

  She looked at the melancholy ardor in the deep blue eyes. "Can I take you to your destination, monsieur?"

  "Oh, madame! My lodgings are on the other side of the river. I could not dream of imposing, of taking up your time...."

  "Nonsense. Get in. For a widow, having one's time taken up is never an imposition."

  As they crossed a bridge over the Seine, where Notre-Dame on its isle rode the sunset-streaked water like a giant ship, they exchanged names, and she began to tell him a little about herself. Her late husband, a man many years her senior, had left his business to her. "It is a store, Monsieur Montlow, near St.-Germain-des-Prés. I do not think you have stores like that in London. It is not just one shop, but many shops, all under one ownership, and under one roof. Some departments sell hats, others dress materials, others household articles, and so on."

  A store. He had already guessed that she belonged to the French middle class rather than the aristocracy. Well, so much the better.

  "And you, Monsieur Montlow? How is it that you, an Englishman and so young, are alone in Paris?"

  "Madame Cordot, I do not want to weary you with my troubles."

  "Please! Tell me."

  "Very well. My mother is dead. My father recently remarried. My stepmother does not like me, and in some way I cannot understand, has poisoned my father's mind against me. He told me that he could no longer pay my expenses at Oxford. He gave me a small sum of money and told me that before it was gone I would have to find some means of supporting myself until I am twenty-one. An inheritance from my grandmother will be turned over to me then.

  "I suppose I should have gone to London, rather than spending money on passage to France. But I was so desperately unhappy that I wanted to get out of England for a while."

  "Of course you did!" She was silent for a few moments as the carriage rolled along a narrow, winding street. "Tell me, is your stepmother younger than your father?"

  "Yes, about half his age."

  So! Her guess had been right. Surely it was not the stepmother, but the father himself who had decided that the poor boy must be turned out. What man, newly married to a woman half his age, would want his superlatively handsome son around?

  As the carriage moved through the warren of streets near the Grand-Châtelet prison, Christopher said, "Please tell the coachman to stop just beyond that lamp."

  The carriage halted at the foot of an alley, scarcely five feet wide, which sloped upward between two rows of moldering houses. Lines of laundry fluttered between the houses, and ragged children played on doorsteps.

  She said, shocked, "You live here?"

  "In a room on the top story of the third house." He smiled. "I am poor, madame, but not so poor that I cannot buy you coffee tomorrow, if you will permit me to."

  The next afternoon he bought her coffee at a small Left Bank Cafe and then accompanied her to her store, Cordot's Emporium. Impressed, he looked at the customers crowding the aisle between counters laden with silks from the Orient, fine porcelain from Limoges, English silver, and laces from Brussels. Later she took him to her three-story house near the Sorbonne for what she called tea "á l'anglaise."

  However love-starved, Yvette was basically a conventional woman. He was a guest in her house two more times before he managed to maneuver her past her scruples and into her bedroom. Since then they had spent hours together each day. She had paid for their restaurant meals and their visits to the theater. But she had not offered to pay for his room in that slum, let alone for better lodgings. And his money was disappearing rapidly. Soon he would have scarcely enough for his return passage to England.

  And he did not want to return to England, not just yet, not even if he learned he could return in safety. The chances were excellent that Oxford, after the notoriety of his trial, would refuse to readmit him. Geoffrey and his other friends who had been with him in the Kingman Street house that night would avoid him. Aware that they themselves might have stood in the dock at Old Bailey, they would shrink from the companionship of someone who actually had.

  And besides, even if that Irishman with murder in his eyes had gone back to his miserable island by now, there was no reason why he could not return to England. Better to keep well out of his way for at least a year. By then even an Irish lust for vengeance might subside.

  No, Yvette must be more generous. Otherwise he could not go on wasting his time with her.

  He rose and crossed to the dressing table. He put his arms around her, cupped her breasts beneath the thin yellow silk in his hands, and rested his chin on the crown of her auburn hair. They smiled at each other in the mirror.

  Then he said, his smile dying, "Yvette, when I think of having to get along without you..."

  "Without me!" Breaking his embrace, she turned around on the brocaded stool. "What are you talking about?"

  "A letter from my father came today. He has relented. I can go home. I did not want to tell you... earlier. I wanted us to have this one last time together...."

  "But, Christopher! You do not want to leave me. Tell me you do not!"

  "Of course I want to stay here in Paris with you. But how can I? My money is almost gone. And where in France can an Englishman find employment? What can I do but go home?"

  She was silent for a long moment. Infatuated as she was, she still realized that she would become a laughingstock if she married him. But perhaps something short of that...

  She said, "You can live here." Never mind that her friends would still laugh. In the case of some of them, there would be envy behind the laughter.

  "Live here? With you, in this house? Oh, Yvette, my darling Yvette!" He caught her hand and held it to his cheek.

  "And you need not worry about employment, my darling boy. I will speak to Monsieur Durand." Marcel Durand managed Cordot's Emporium for her. "He will give you employment."

 
That was the middle class for you, Christopher thought coldly. She would not allow him just to live here. She wanted to put him to work.

  "What sort of employment?"

  She laughed. "Don't look like that, my dear one. Did you think I planned to have you stand behind a counter? Monsieur Durand will make you his assistant. Didn't you say that you did excellently in mathematics at Oxford? Well, I will tell him that you are to handle the accounts."

  The accounts. With his two hands he tilted her face upward and kissed her on the lips.

  CHAPTER 13

  At the Hedges, the maple tree unfurled its first tender green leaves. The daffodils planted at its base gave way to scarlet tulips and deep blue dwarf iris. Swallows returned, soaring and diving through the bright sunlight, and began to build a nest under the carriage-house eaves.

  Elizabeth moved, busy and silent, through the glorious spring, now dreading Donald's almost daily visits. At first he made anxious inquiries about the circles under her eyes, and her abstracted air. She was all right, she would protest. It was just that she was not sleeping too well. Perhaps she was still feeling the aftereffects of the trial. Finally he stopped questioning her. But often she was aware of a look in his hazel eyes—puzzled, worried, a little hurt—that sent an almost physical pain through her heart.

  One morning in early April she descended the stairs, feather duster in hand, and started back along the hall to the kitchen. Her mother hailed her joyfully from the side parlor. "Elizabeth! We have a letter from Christopher!"

  When Elizabeth came into the room and stretched out her hand, Mrs. Montlow said, "No, no! Sit down. I'll read it to you.

  "It is from Paris," she went on. He starts out, 'Dearest Mama and Liza,' and then he says, 'Forgive me for my silence. I did not want to write until I had good news for you.'"

  Mrs. Montlow looked up from the page, beaming. "You see? The poor foolish boy didn't realize that we would be less worried by bad news than by no news at all." She resumed her reading:

  I have employment, Mama, really excellent employment. It happened like this. I was wandering along the Seine one day, missing you and Liza dreadfully, and yet afraid to come home, and so wondering what I should do next. As I was looking at a river barge, a middle-aged couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Yves Cordot, stopped beside me, and we fell into conversation. They asked me to have an ice with them at a café near Luxembourg Palace. There Mr. Cordot told me that he owned Cordot's Emporium, of which you maybe have heard.

  He seemed to like me, Mama. Anyway, I called upon him the next day at the emporium, as he had asked me to do, and he offered me employment. I help with the accounts, and soon may be in full charge of them.

  Now, I can just hear you, Mama. What a disgrace, you are saying. A Montlow, in trade! But perhaps, dearest Mama, people of our class take a false view of life. There is nothing wrong with honest employment. I think Liza will agree with me. Think of how hard she works in the garden and in the house. And think of how proud we are of her, and how grateful to her!

  As for my education, I can continue it myself, in the evening hours. True, books are expensive, but not so expensive as attending Oxford!

  For a few months I must repay Mr. Cordot's kindness with as much diligence as possible. But after that, if you and Liza think it is safe, I would like to pay you a visit.

  I remain,

  Your affectionate son and brother,

  Christopher.

  Mrs. Montlow looked up, blue eyes shining. "How earnest he sounds, how mature! Perhaps the terrible ordeal he suffered has been good for him, after all. And just think of the proud, loving things he says about you!"

  "Yes, that was kind of him. And it is wonderful to know he is all right. Will you excuse me now, Mother? I still have things to do."

  She went back to the kitchen, where Mary Hawkins was shelling green peas, and hung the feather duster on its hook on the wall. Then she went out the back door, picked up a rectangle of old carpeting from the bench against the house's rear wall, and carried it down to the maple tree. Kneeling on the carpet, she began to pull up the small weeds sprouting among the iris and tulips.

  She had heard of Cordot's Emporium. Probably her brother had been given employment there. But Elizabeth doubted the sex of his benefactor. Christopher's ways, however winning, were not such as to recommend him as an employee to a hardheaded merchant.

  The flowerbed looked clean now. She stood up.

  Nausea in the pit of her stomach. A gray mist closing in on her, turning black, engulfing her.

  She opened her eyes, to find herself lying on the ground. Mary Hawkins was beside her, cradling her shoulder and head with one arm, holding a glass of water in her other hand.

  Elizabeth said, "I fainted?"

  "Yes, miss. I saw you from the kitchen window. Drink this."

  Elizabeth took a sip of water. So she had fainted. She had been fifteen when she found one of the housemaids, Ellen, crumpled in a faint on the scullery floor. Weeks later the girl had been sent home in disgrace to her family's tumbledown farmhouse a few miles the other side of Parnley. Sometimes Elizabeth had caught a glimpse of Ellen, scrubbing the front steps of some village householder or carrying water from the farmhouse well with her bastard child, a girl, walking beside her.

  Hawkins said, "Best to get in the house before your mother sees you. Do you think you can walk?"

  "Yes."

  As she moved toward the kitchen door with Hawkins' hand supporting her elbow, the older woman said, "You have been overburdened, Miss Elizabeth. All that trouble over Mr. Christopher. And now, planning for your marriage. It is to be in late June, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "If you will forgive my saying so, miss, I wish it were sooner. I don't believe in long betrothals. They are a strain on everyone concerned."

  Elizabeth darted a side glance at the woman. Did she suspect? It was impossible to tell from her face. But if she did suspect, plainly she thought that the child was Donald Weymouth's, conceived when she and Donald, sometime during Mrs. Montlow's stay at Aunt Sara's house, had succumbed to temptation.

  Would that we had, Elizabeth thought bitterly. Would that the child she carried was Donald's. But as it was... Again she had a vision of how Donald would look if he ever learned how Patrick Stanford had treated her. All the gentleness and humor draining from that beloved face, and in its stead a cold, implacable fury.

  In the kitchen, Elizabeth said, "I had best go upstairs and lie down."

  Hawkins nodded. "You do that, miss."

  Elizabeth moved down the hall toward the open door of the side parlor and the closed door of the library opposite. "It be seldom, albeit not unknown..." that old book of her father's had said. Why had she taken so much comfort from the first phrase that she had ignored the second?

  Her mother, absorbed in perhaps the fifth rereading of her son's letter, did not look up as Elizabeth passed the doorway. She went on up the stairs to her room, closed the door, and then stood at the south window, staring blindly at a green hill now dotted with golden dandelions.

  There were at least two alternatives open to her. In the back streets of London, she had heard, there were women who, for a fee, would end an unwanted pregnancy. The thought of seeking out such a woman sent a shudder through Elizabeth. It was not just moral scruples, nor the fact that women so aborted sometimes died. Even in her misery and terror, she felt a certain responsibility toward the new life within her. However conceived, the child was her child.

  She could cross the channel upon some pretext or another—to visit Christopher?—and prolong her stay in Amsterdam or Brussels or some other city until her child was born. Then she could promise some woman a quarterly sum to raise the child as her own. But what excuse could she give her frail mother, already deprived of a son, for her own absence of many months? How could she prevent Donald from following her and learning the truth?

  And how would she feel in the years ahead, making excuses to cross the channel for furtive visits to her child, a
nd in the long stretches between visits, wondering how the child fared?

  She grew very still. Perhaps there was a third alternative.

  Patrick Stanford, lying beside her on that bed over there, and saying, "I am willing to marry you. After all, I could use your twenty thousand pounds."

  Had he just been mocking her? Undoubtedly. But still, if she wrote to him...

  Because of what had happened in this room, she could never feel anything for him but loathing. And yet, justice compelled her to acknowledge that he had not been without provocation. Nor was he an entirely evil man. There had been real grief behind the savagery in his voice when he spoke of his ward dying before his eyes. A truly heartless man would not have felt that grief.

  And even if her own plight struck no compassionate chord within him, there was still her twenty thousand pounds. The thought was matter-of-fact. In her extremity, irony was an emotional luxury she could not afford.

  Surely she had another two months before her condition became apparent to everyone. Her letter would take about a week to reach him, and his answer another week to reach her. If she received a negative reply, or none at all, she would still have time to decide between the crone in the London back street and the lonely months posing as a pregnant young widow in Brussels or Amsterdam.

  What was his address? She recalled him on the witness stand, his face a cold mask as he said, "I am Sir Patrick Stanford, baronet, of Stanford Hall, near Cork, Ireland."

  She crossed to the small mahogany desk in one corner, sat down, and took letter paper from the desk drawer. With the quill pen in her hand she sat, motionless, sickened and terrified by a memory. His body, weighing her down there on that bed across the room.

  But that had been an act of revenge and hatred rather than desire. Surely a man like Patrick Stanford had no lack of willing bed partners. Perhaps all she had to do was to make it clear...

  She drew the sheet of paper toward her and began to write.