“Brownkin is important?”
Tamora said the word again, more insistently.
“That squirrel on the table beside the big bed. Will you bring it to her?” Amelia knew it was a risk. Tamora could take exception to this man who had tackled her in the cold November grass only twenty minutes earlier and throw a fit. But sometimes the warm fire and her favorite blanket worked a kind of magic on her.
He carried the squirrel carefully, with a perplexed look on his usually placid face.
“That is Mister Brownkin. My father is a naturalist. He has rooms and rooms of butterflies and insects in boxes and drawers and in display cases. These last few years he’s moved on to small mammals and birds.” She laughed. “I can’t say my mother approves. She discourages him from sharing them with company, but he is awfully proud of his own work.”
“Shall I give it to her?”
The squirrel was mounted on a small base, its back feet firmly planted and nailed onto the wood. The tail curved in an S, and its ears were turned outward slightly to show how white the fur inside was. Its tiny paws held an acorn in a death grip, and its mouth was open as though it were about to take a bite out of it.
Aaron held out the squirrel to Tamora. She did not look at him, but snatched the squirrel as though she were afraid he might take it away again at any moment. Tucking the squirrel’s head beneath her small, pointed chin, she began to stroke its tail with one bony hand.
Amelia was ashamed of her daughter’s thinness. She knew that anyone who saw her probably assumed that she was being starved for her bad behavior. It was not uncommon for people to think the insane did not care about food or even know when they were hungry. But Amelia understood very well that her daughter hungered, that she had feelings.
Harriet appeared at the door with a tray. “Here’s the tea, and Tamora’s food. I brought an extra cup in case Mister Aaron wanted some tea as well.” She set the tea tray on the single full-size table in the room and removed the dish with the peanuts on it, along with a two-handled mug, to the child’s table. When the tea was arranged, Harriet went to sit quietly in a chair and took up some knitting.
“Please sit down, Aaron.”
They drank their tea in companionable quiet as Tamora stroked the squirrel. A bald spot the size of a shirt button had begun to form behind its left ear, and Amelia had no idea what would happen when all the hair was gone. At least there were no more brains in the poor squirrel’s head.
She was grateful for the patient way Aaron sat, understanding without being told that Tamora would decide how the next little while would go. With the nursery door open, she could hear Mary laughing downstairs as they moved to the library for after-dinner wine. Mary was the kind of woman who, because Amelia had left the table, would go along with the men, and not retire to her own room while the men went into the library. But there was no real judgment in the observation. Amelia was not her mother, and they were in remotest Virginia. Not New York.
After a few minutes, Tamora unwound herself from the blanket and, still clutching the squirrel, went to the child’s table and sat down in front of the food. The squirrel rested in her lap like a pet, its blank glass eyes staring over the plate.
Tamora arranged the peanuts as they watched. Harriet stopped knitting when Tamora put her hands back on the squirrel.
Instinctively, Amelia knew that there were either fewer or more than two dozen peanuts on the plate and braced herself for the tantrum. But the tantrum didn’t come. Tamora got up, holding the squirrel in one hand, and picked up one of the peanuts from the plate. She crossed the room, and, without meeting his eye, held out the peanut to Aaron.
Chapter 18
LUCY
June 1899
Paris!
It had always been Lucy’s dream to come to Paris, where her own parents and several of her Boston friends had taken their wedding trips. Only a dozen days earlier, she had walked in the moonlight down the path to the dock in front of the Archers’ river house with Randolph, and had let him kiss her for the first time. He had held her so closely that for a moment her breath left her and she felt as though she were floating. No boy had ever kissed her so completely. After he kissed her a second time, he asked her to be his wife, to come and live with him at Bliss House. Now she was half a world away, out of reach of her parents and everything she had ever known, and she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to return.
She stood at the window of their suite at the Hôtel Continental, looking down at the boulevard, watching the endless stream of small fiacres toting fashionable people through the city. They had visited the Musée du Louvre in the morning together and had arranged for a photographer to take their picture on the Rue de Rivoli, but now Randolph was lunching with an odd, intensely nearsighted man, Monsieur Philippe, whom he had introduced to her the day before. In the afternoon, she was to meet Randolph at the House of Paquin to order more dresses, and she was nervous. The women of Paris were dressed so smartly that she was terribly intimidated. In New York, Randolph had taken her to Lord & Taylor to buy some readymade dresses for the crossing (and if the ones Randolph encouraged her to buy were more girlish than she and the rather opinionated saleswoman might have preferred, Lucy told herself it was because he felt the difference in their ages so strongly, and she loved him for it). The informal dresses she’d had at the river house had been barely suitable for traveling. They had fled Old Gate like thieves in the night, stopping at Bliss House only briefly to deposit Carrie (who, Randolph insisted, would surely be fired when the Searles discovered she’d been involved in the elopement, and so must now work at Bliss House) and to pick up Randolph’s packed trunks.
To see the trunks secured and waiting in the front hallway had been a surprise. Had he been so certain of her? Was she so transparent? Her mother had cautioned her about appearing too eager and obvious with young men, telling her she was too lovely, too beautifully formed, and too wealthy to be desperate.
“Men can smell desperation on a girl. Neither you nor Juliet have anything to be ashamed of.”
Lucy hadn’t been desperate in that sense. Only desperate to see Randolph and to return to Bliss House. As soon as he kissed her, she felt her full strength returning and the anticipation of being at the house again made her return his kiss with an energy that alarmed and thrilled her.
Faye had wanted to accompany them as far as Charlottesville, but Josiah and Randolph had dissuaded her. She came to the bedroom to help Lucy pack while Carrie, stunned and excited herself, had gone to pack her own things.
“Mummy and I will deal with your mother. You’re not to worry. How thrilling it all is. Now you really will be a scandal!”
“You say it like being a scandal is a good thing. What if they come after me?” The image of her father in the doorway of the theater burned in her mind. She still felt the shame of it. Mortified in front of so many people she knew.
Faye took her by the shoulders. “You’ll be married. No one will be able to make you do a single thing that you don’t want to do. Think of it. Mistress of one of the most beautiful houses in Virginia, married to a man who won’t treat you like you’re some decorated doll. You know his liberated views. He loves you because you’re beautiful and smart. Do you know what a luxury that is?”
Was Faye right? She could only hope that Randolph felt that way. In truth, they had not spent much time talking. She would have to trust that Faye knew Randolph better than she.
Until Walpurgisnacht, he had had no presence in her life except as someone her parents avoided, and as a wealthy, local man who had lost his family through tragedy. She had heard that the little girl had been insane, and the wife, Amelia, had killed herself. There had been hints that he was involved in the deaths, but it appeared to be only gossip. She saw him so differently now, as though what she’d seen of him before was a false thing. A different man. Since he’d touched her at Bliss House, taken care of her so thoughtfully after she’d fallen in the nursery (what a ridiculous state she’d been
in!), she had known a different man. The desire to truly know him had lodged in her like a wonderful and awful sickness.
She blushed to think of their wedding night and how he had been so careful of her at first. So gentle. After their marriage at the courthouse, with a cousin of Randolph’s as a witness, they had returned to the Astoria Hotel. Randolph had had their belongings moved from their separate rooms and into a suite the size of three of the bedrooms in her parents’ house.
On seeing the room, and the waiting champagne and the vases full of roses—all red, save one massive bunch of white, which he said was to honor her “superior innocence,” a phrase that embarrassed but pleased her—she had kissed him passionately and not at all innocently.
She could hardly eat the extravagant dinner of lamb and sweetbreads, soup, and several different cheeses, each served with a different wine by a footman in livery who materialized from the suite’s small kitchen at every right moment. The wine helped her forget how angry her mother would be that she had eloped, had not allowed her to orchestrate the kind of wedding she had always expected her daughter to have, indeed, helped Lucy forget that everyone in her family, especially Juliet, would feel betrayed and angry. It helped her forget that they were probably looking for her even as she and Randolph sat talking, over their soup, of the things they would do in Paris. It helped quell the tiny voice deep inside her that whispered that perhaps she’d done it all not because she loved Randolph, but to spite her mother and father.
That Randolph loved her, she was certain. In the suite’s gold-lit bedroom, he had untied the satin ribbons of the white peignoir that the saleswoman had helped her select, and slid it from her shoulders, murmuring with pleasure at the fairness of her skin. Laying her down on the large, soft bed, he removed his clothes, and she saw him naked for the second time in her life. But this time was so different that she didn’t even think to compare it to the first. She did, though, think of Josiah and his hurried, hungry fumblings.
When she responded to Randolph’s careful touches with a passion of her own, he chuckled softly and called her his “wicked little bride.”
The pain—not an unhappy pain—came quickly after. Then the blood. Far more than she had believed would emerge from her body. It was certain that the blood meant she was no longer a virgin, but she feared that so much of it was a sign that her old life had died, completely and forever.
The dresses she chose at the House of Paquin were much more to her liking than the ones they had bought in New York, and she could hardly bear to wait the two weeks it would take to have them made. After the two weeks, they would be fitted, and the dresses would follow her home. Randolph had been detained and sent a message that she should choose the dresses without him. Also, Monsieur Philippe would join them at the suite for dinner. Perhaps Madame Paquin’s assistant had taken her too much in hand, telling her firmly what he believed flattered her most, but Lucy was happy with the choices, and returned with a thick portfolio of sketches for Randolph to see. Everything was the latest fashion: a fitted navy suit with large, intricately carved buttons, another suit with a black silk jacket and a vibrant ruby skirt, a number of day dresses in lovely pastels with the newer, thinner underskirts, and three evening dresses in silk and chiffon, one in a rich rose satin trimmed in pale blue with a square neckline that was just daring enough. She suspected that her mother would be pleased.
Except that her mother would probably never speak to her again. Lucy had written to her from the Astoria, asking her to write back to her in Paris, but there hadn’t yet been time for a letter to arrive. If there were to be a letter. Which she doubted. Her father? They had been married by a judge, and she did not imagine for a moment that he would agree to solemnize the marriage.
That Monsieur Philippe was coming to the suite for dinner was disappointing. That they had dined out only one of the four nights they’d been in Paris puzzled her. Randolph, for his worldliness, seemed content to eat without company or music around him. After attending the opera (all in Italian, which she did not speak, but she was content to see the costumes and listen to the beautiful voices), she had thought they might go to Maxim’s or another fashionable restaurant, but they had just returned to pheasant and soup and ice cream at the hotel. She did convince him to keep the windows open so she could hear the evening traffic and the voices in the street. The evenings were temperate and even seductive. They made love after dinner every night, and she felt a deep satisfaction with herself, with Randolph. The idea that her parents might have imagined that she would be unhappy in Randolph’s presence made her smile. If only they could see them together. See their happiness.
Surely they would want to see me happy.
At five o’clock, a uniformed boy knocked on the door with a written message from Randolph. “Please order dinner at your leisure, my dear. My head is full of business. Have the steward select the wines. We will serve ourselves this evening.”
It pleased her to order dinner, and, again, she selected ice cream for dessert. This time cream and strawberries. She missed the strawberries from home. There was a patch growing on the hillock below the stone wall at the back of her parents’ property, and she and Juliet had spent many mornings as children eating as many as they could before the cook had a chance to come out and pick them for the family table.
At seven, Lucy dressed in a pale green silk gown with peach chiffon trim and short, open sleeves filled with layers of chiffon. If they were staying in, she wanted to at least look as lovely for Randolph and his guest as she would have if they’d gone out. Monsieur Philippe had the mien of a man who expected little from the world—an odd associate for Randolph, but then she knew nothing about his business—and she hoped to charm him for Randolph’s sake.
Dinner was waiting beneath covered dishes when Randolph and Monsieur Philippe arrived. Monsieur Philippe squinted even harder behind his eyeglasses than she remembered, and the lenses themselves were smudged, as though he spent a lot of time handling them. He wore fawn-colored gloves that were also marked with ungentlemanly smudges of black and gray, and he didn’t bother to remove them after coming inside. When he greeted her with a quick, airy kiss on each cheek, she caught a sharp scent of body odor that was little masked by his cologne. There was some other odor, too. Not quite tobacco, but sweeter, and it clung to Randolph as well.
Randolph was more composed, but as his lips lingered on her cheek in a more husbandly kiss, she felt a pinch on her left breast. Had Randolph dared to fondle her in front of Monsieur Philippe? Even at the Maypole he had been the perfect gentleman. Lucy decided she must have been mistaken.
“Ah, wine and water!” Monsieur Philippe fell upon the set table like a desperate man. His English was perfect, if heavily accented.
“Pour me some water, Philippe. I need sustenance to make it to my room to change my jacket.” He turned to Lucy. “It stinks of the streets today. Some fool smoking a cigar—on the street, mind you!—ran into me and burned a hole in the cuff. I was very lucky he missed my hand.” He held up his forearm so she could see the hole.
“Oh, no. We’ll have that repaired. There must be someone close to here who can take care of it. It’s too bad. I’m sure they would be very sorry if they knew.”
Randolph laughed. “You have a very tender heart, my love. If only the world were as kind as you see it.”
He took a water glass from Monsieur Philippe and drank deeply. “Paris water tastes like misery, Philippe. How can you people drink this stuff? I hear that when J. P. Morgan visits Paris, he brings casks of his own water melted from glaciers in the north.”
“I hear he drinks the blood of North African infants on Thursdays, and that when he is cut, his own blood runs the color of American money.”
They laughed again, thoroughly amused with themselves, and Lucy decided that, while they were not stumbling or slurring, they must be drunk.
Before Randolph entered the bedroom, which led to the dressing room, he turned back to Lucy. “We’ll have no inte
rruptions tonight? We are serving ourselves and they will take the things away in the morning, yes?”
“Of course. Isn’t that what you asked me to arrange?” For one brief moment she couldn’t recall if she’d confirmed with the maître d’ to have the things taken in the morning, but she was almost certain that she had. It was a peculiar request. Her own mother was fastidious about making sure the kitchen had been cleaned before any staff person could either leave or retire for the night.
At least the champagne was cold, and by the time they finished the second bottle of red wine and the thinly sliced beef accented with tarragon and a sauce that was more of a blood gravy, she was laughing along with the two men.
To her surprise, Randolph helped her move the dishes to the kitchen.
“It’s not too much work for you, my love, is it?” He touched the back of her neck as they passed down the hall.
“Of course not. I’m happy to do it.”
When they reached the kitchen, they put the things down and he stopped her and kissed her, his mouth sweet with strawberry ice cream and wine. “Monsieur Philippe thinks you are quite the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.”
Feeling puckish, she whispered, “Can he actually see me through those awful eyeglasses?”
Before returning to the table, she suggested that they have an early night, that perhaps they could meet Monsieur Philippe for dinner at a restaurant another evening. Randolph’s eyes gleamed with affection, and he cupped a hand over her breast as he nipped lightly at her ear.
“You will wear this old man’s body out with your voraciousness, my love.”
As they played cards, the men drank port, while Lucy occasionally sipped a blackberry cordial. Monsieur Philippe won hand after hand of the German card game, Skat, despite appearing to not be able to see his cards very well. When she noted the stacks of francs in front of him, the much smaller one in front of her, and none at all in front of Randolph, she wondered if perhaps Randolph was letting him win. Still, the game made her pleasantly homesick for Juliet, with whom she had played game after game of twenty-one on rainy days and cold winter nights.
The Abandoned Heart Page 16
