A Woman's Estate

by Roberta Gellis

  This revelation gave Abigail considerable food for thought. Guilt urged her to confess and promise amendment. Practical common sense bade her to hold her tongue. There was no reason on earth why poor Arthur should suffer for her decision to act as a spy, and to tell him would be to place him in the unenviable position of either condoning what she had done or denouncing her to the authorities. Not that Abigail seriously feared her husband would betray her, but he would be made uncomfortable by the knowledge that, strictly speaking, he should have done so. And, a little rebellious voice whispered inside her, even if he does not betray that you have spied for the United States, he will make you promise never to do it again, perhaps never to see Albert again.

  Partly because of the absence of their minds, both host and hostess were even more cordial than usual. Still, no matter how warmly their guests were pressed to have one more cup of tea and told that it was still early, at last the evening came to an end. By the time the door closed behind the last two guests—Hilda and Eustace, naturally—Abigail had decided firmly that for his own good Arthur must never know what she had done. She smiled at him and then sighed.

  “Another duty done, thank God,” she remarked. “They are good people, but so dreadfully dull.”

  “Yes,” Arthur agreed stiffly, and then asked in a rush, “Where were you, Abigail?”

  The question shocked her. It had not occurred to her that Arthur would not, like all the others, simply assume that Hilda was trying to blow a nothing up into a scandal. Since no other reference had been made to Lady Sarah’s breakfast during the whole evening, Abigail had put that matter out of her mind. She had prepared no explanation—all she knew was that she dared not tell the truth.

  “I was at the breakfast,” she repeated, and seeing the disbelief and anger in his face, her guilt and fear combined to make her angry, too. “How dare you?” she gasped, and then her voice rose in rage. “Are you equating me with the whores you have played games with all your life? I can assure you that if I were of a mind to sample the field, I would not have bothered to marry.”

  Arthur stood staring down at her, knowing what she said was true. First he felt a wash of relief because his initial reaction was to the natural connection built up in his mind over the years, husband-cuckold. Then he felt ashamed momentarily, realizing that his past experience of the many married women who seemed only too eager to find their satisfaction outside their vows had distorted his view. But he knew too, that Abigail’s anger was wrong, not natural for her. She should have laughed at him or kissed him and explained. Something was hidden behind that anger. He shook his head.

  “I am not accusing you of having an affair,” he said, “but I am also certain that although you may have appeared at Lady Sarah’s, it must have been a very brief appearance.”

  Abigail also knew she had made the wrong response. That threw her further off balance, and she panicked. In desperation she cried, “It is none of your business.”

  “What?” Arthur exclaimed, his voice also rising. “You are my wife. Everything you do is my business, and it is my right to know—”

  “No!” she shrieked. “I am a person, not only a wife.” And she whirled and ran up the stairs and into her dressing room, where she slammed the door.

  Once there she leaned, shaking, against the wall, thanking God that it was not her custom to have her maid waiting for her. If Abigail did not summon her by eleven, she left a nightgown and peignoir lying ready for her mistress and went off to bed. It was much more enjoyable, Abigail had found, to get Arthur to help her should she find difficulty in undressing. Indeed, the sight of her nightclothes brought to Abigail’s mind the many times she had called him to her assistance, often when she could have managed very well herself. She uttered a sob and shuddered.

  Abigail knew she had no right to say what she had said. Arthur never treated her as less than a person who had every right to normal privacy. He never examined her letters—either those that came to the house or those she sent out. Even when she asked him to frank them for her, he scrawled his name on them without bothering to look at the address. This very morning he had passed the material from Rutupiae to her with hardly a glance. She must tell him something, but she could not tell him the truth. And then a chill of fear passed through her. Alex would tell him…

  With that thought came an enlightenment that might bring salvation. Abigail paused a moment longer to collect her thoughts, and then hurried through the bedroom, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw that the door to Arthur’s dressing room was not shut. She was only just in time, he was in the act of crossing his room to close the door.

  “Arthur,” she called, “don’t shut me out.”

  He hesitated, then came into the bedroom and pulled the door closed behind him. From that Abigail knew that he had already rung for his valet, and she would have only a few minutes. If she had not convinced him she was telling the truth by the time his man announced his arrival by tapping on the door, Arthur would use that as an excuse to leave her.

  “Forgive me,” she began. “I had no right to say that.”

  He shrugged. “It is your mania,” he admitted, his voice cold. “I suppose I should have phrased my objection to your refusal to explain differently.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. I mean I had no right to say it was none of your business—but I was still angry because you thought I would cheat. I never would, Arthur, never. I don’t believe I will ever love another man as I love you, but if it should happen, if something should change the way we feel about each other—I would go away. I would never live with you and cheat you.”

  He looked down into the lovely violet eyes brimming with tears. He could barely resist her statement of love. It was a struggle not to take her in his arms and say all was forgiven, that he did not care what had delayed her. Yet if he did that, Arthur knew he would feel a fool, feel that he was being manipulated like a puppet, or worse, like a beast whose brain was ruled by his genitals. Even knowing, he almost yielded. It was Abigail who saved him. She had paused to sniff and steady her voice, but he was just about to draw her to him when she shook her head and went on.

  Abigail was not stupid. She had seen the struggle in her husband’s face, and she knew she had won. She could stop right now, and he would never ask again—but a little sore spot would remain where she had bruised his pride. To tell him what she had planned, even though it was no longer necessary, would ease that—and save any new questions being asked if Alex Baring happened to mention his visit.

  “And worse than that,” she added, biting her lip, “the only reason the idea that you suspected me of being unfaithful came into my head was because I was furious that you didn’t believe me. I thought I had been so clever. I had made everyone think that Hilda was simply trying to create trouble—and you saw through me. Oh, Arthur, I’m sorry. One minute after I ran up, I knew how stupid I was. You noticed because you cared more than any of the others. Francis would never have noticed.”

  “Perhaps he was fortunate.”

  “Now you are just being spiteful,” Abigail said with a very tentative smile. “I did have a reason for not wanting to explain to everyone why I was late. You see, I had a note from Albert—” She hesitated as a blankness flickered across Arthur’s expression and, assuming it was because he did not recognize the name, continued, “Albert Gallatin. He has been appointed one of the members of the peace commission and has come to London. We were close friends in the United States, and I wished to invite him to stay with us while he was here.”

  “Stay with us?” Arthur repeated.

  Gallatin’s name had aroused a familiar pang of jealousy, but it was stilled suddenly when Abigail said she intended to invite the man to live with them. One does not invite a past lover to one’s husband’s home, particularly if one has unassuaged longings. Arthur was about to second the invitation enthusiastically, but was prevented by Abigail’s further explanation of her need for Gallatin’s address, Baring�
��s visit and her reluctant agreement not to see Gallatin while he was in London.

  “But I had to write to him to explain,” she said, “and that took a while, and then—well, perhaps I was just silly and carried things too far, but I thought I would prefer not to send one of our footmen, so I walked to Bond Street and sent a jarvey with the message. And I had to go to the breakfast because of our dinner tonight. I could not send a message that I was unwell because Lady Sarah might have heard about it and been offended. But if I told the truth about why I was late, I might just as well have gone to see Albert, so I slipped in by the gate and—and just pretended I had been there all along.”

  About the middle of this disquisition, Arthur’s valet tapped. Abigail hurried the last few sentences to finish, and Arthur shook his head when she was done, but he could not help smiling at her. Nonetheless, he did not take her in his arms and call out to his valet to go away, as he sometimes did, to that sober gentleman’s disgust. He turned toward the door, glad that there was no need for words at that moment. He wanted time to think. He had been the battleground of too many fierce emotions in too short a time. Being rid of his clothes would give him a breathing space in which to decide whether he had heard enough and wished to drop the subject or had more questions to ask.

  But as he was eased out of his tight-fitting coat and his boots were drawn off, Arthur wondered why he felt there might be questions. Everything that Abigail had said and done after he entered the bedroom was as “right” as her behavior when Hilda and Eustace left was “wrong”. To fly into a rage and then apologize and explain was typical of Abigail, and the explanation was equally typical. Still, there was something…something… Pantaloons, shirt, underlinen, and stockings were so expertly removed that Arthur was hardly aware of being stripped. Automatically he rejected the nightshirt and nightcap his valet proffered, ignored the man’s reproving expression, and slid his arms into a heavy silk dressing gown.

  All the time Arthur had picked at what Abigail had said, especially every word that referred to Gallatin, but there was nothing to disturb him. In fact, the open desire to have Gallatin as a guest, the openly expressed pleasure of knowing he was in London, and then the disappointment at being deprived of his company were honest. Arthur felt he was being unreasonable and pushed his doubts back into the dark corner where they had lived so long already as he went into the bedroom again, shed the dressing gown, and got into bed. Abigail sat up and kissed him on the nose.

  “Are you still cross?” she asked childishly, and then when he shook his head, “do you think Alex was wrong? Could we invite Albert to stay with us?”

  Arthur almost said yes to the last question out of eagerness to meet Gallatin, but he was too honest and also too convinced that peace with the United States would be economically and politically valuable to deny that Baring’s arguments were valid. Arthur was also aware of a problem that Baring had not mentioned. The government was unhappy over the idea of releasing tens of thousands of soldiers, made useless by the end of the European war, into a depressed economy in which there would be no employment for them. Thus, some ministers argued that sending the troops to Canada and pursuing the war would have double benefits that would offset the expense.

  This only made it more likely that excuses would be sought to delay the peace negotiations, and Arthur was forced to put aside his personal preference. “No,” he said. “I am afraid Baring is right. I do not know how the government will react, but it is better as things are to offer them no provocation.”

  Abigail slid an arm around his neck and pulled him down with her. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “You and Albert would enjoy each other.”

  The words were a balm. Abigail might have her faults, but Arthur could not believe she was so depraved as to tell her husband that he would enjoy the company of her lover. Happily he drew her closer and met the lips lifted toward his. Her arms tightened so convulsively around him that he was startled, but she relaxed before he could free his mouth to ask a question. And then her hands were moving over him, hands that had learned his body far better than any other ever had, that could find just those places that were unendurably exciting to him. In return, he stroked Abigail’s responsive body, feeling the nipples rise and harden on her breasts and the tiny shudderings in her thighs as his fingers sought out her most sensitive places. He forgot all doubt, lost in a purely physical dimension in which sensation ruled alone.

  It was not until he was dressing the next morning that slight oddities struck Arthur. The way Abigail had responded to his first kiss was more like a drowning person being rescued than a wife who had good reason to expect to be kissed. What was more, although Abigail always enjoyed making love, usually she was as mischievous about that as about everything else. By now she could play him as Paganini played the violin, and since their wedding, she had done just that. Abigail clearly favored a long and interesting foreplay and usually interspersed her most sensual manipulations with others more playful and teasing, which kept his ardor in check. That had not been true last night.

  Arthur’s hands froze on the intricate folds he was making in his elaborately tied neckcloth. Acting? As the word formed in his mind, he knew it was wrong. Arthur was experienced with all kinds of women telling all kinds of lies, and he was aware that acting skill, no matter how great, could not counterfeit certain responses. Jealousy flicked him again, but before he could torment himself with the notion that another man’s image filled his wife’s mind as her body responded to his caresses, the jealousy was quenched by his memory of the way she said she would not cheat him. Not another man, then. Still, the feeling that Abigail was hiding something was very strong.

  His fingers resumed their delicate work, tied the final bow, and inserted the jeweled pin exactly right for the hour of the morning and the meeting he was scheduled to attend. His eyes, however, were absent as his valet eased him into his coat, straightened his waistcoat, and gave a last careful brushing to coat and pantaloons. He was gratified by his master’s patience; often Arthur would spurn the last tiny details, pointing out that two minutes after he stepped out of the house his boots would be dusty and his coat and pantaloons speckled with airborne fuzz and soot.

  There were only two subjects on which Abigail was peculiar, Arthur was thinking as his valet’s brush passed over his shoulders. Her independence and America’s. Damn her, he thought, I’ll give her independence. I will beat her with a stick no thicker than my thumb—which, Arthur had learned to his horror during his search of the laws regarding marriage, was legal in certain American states— if she’s brewing mischief. The notion was not, of course, serious, only an irritable response to a sense of unease. But that too passed when a light comment of Abigail’s over breakfast reminded Arthur that they had quarreled—not about some abstract topic, but about a personal matter—just before making love. He nearly laughed at himself. How could he have been so silly as to seek abstruse reasons for the way Abigail had acted when so obvious and natural a one had been overlooked.

  Nonetheless, the abstruse reasons worked under the skin. Arthur found himself more and more fascinated by the politics and economy of the United States, and that interest gave him a good reason to ask Baring to arrange a private meeting with Gallatin. He was subtly unsettled by that. Although Gallatin was over fifty and mostly bald, he had an extraordinarily brilliant mind, a charm of manner, and a dry wit that Arthur knew Abigail would find irresistible. And it was no help to discover that though Gallatin loved Abigail, he plainly loved her as a daughter.

  It was impossible to blame Gallatin, but the meeting produced another uncomfortable effect. Arthur found himself infuriated because he could not help liking and admiring the person who might be his wife’s ideal. That exposed a fact he had tried to hide from himself. It was ridiculous at his age to be so much in love as to want Abigail to think he was the best and most wonderful person in the world. For the first time Arthur realized that he had put off love too long. In youth the pangs might b
e equally violent, but they are mingled with many other violent hopes and fears. By his time of life, everything had found a balance—everything except love.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Although Abigail had no idea that her husband had a specific person in mind, she did now realize that he was jealous. Francis had never been jealous, and she was both flattered and amused by Arthur’s possessiveness. Abigail understood very well, however, that jealousy is not amusing to the person suffering from it, and she wished to protect Arthur as much as possible. That meant that she must be either at home or in irreproachable company at all times. This would have been no trouble to Abigail had she felt free to explain that whenever she was late or missed an engagement completely, she had been buying books. But she had also realized that Arthur preferred not to be reminded that she was still a shopkeeper.

  Unfortunately, Abigail could not put off her book buying until Arthur came to trust her better, because at this moment the end of the war in Europe provided a way to circumvent the trade embargo between England and America. The books could now be sent to France, which was not at war with the United States, and shipped from there. But Abigail feared this would not be possible for long. She had already heard complaints about France’s willingness to trade with America and felt that a cessation of this trade might be made part of the peace agreement.

  Since Abigail had no desire to torment Arthur or to remind him of her “common” employment as a shopkeeper, she began to take great care not to miss or be late to appointments, confining her business to the mornings. Fortunately, Arthur usually left the house about nine, and the managers of Hatchard’s and Lackington’s shops were both understanding and obliging. Abigail was permitted to come before the stores opened to the public and also to examine stock in the storerooms. Still she could seldom remain more than an hour or two before rushing home to dress for a social engagement, and more visits to the bookshops were necessary than could be explained by the most avid reading habits.