She hadn’t yet written Juliet. Would their parents let her visit Bliss House? At sixteen, Juliet was not as bold as Lucy, and was her mother’s favorite. That their mother played favorites was the worst-kept secret of the family. But because Juliet was sweet and loving in addition to being obedient, Lucy could not resent her for it. She resolved to write her a letter the next morning.
The noise from the streets had all but disappeared, and after stifling a yawn, Lucy quietly announced that, if they did not mind, she would go to bed.
As she rose, Monsieur Philippe nearly overturned his chair, so quickly did he also rise from the table.
“Of course! Randolph, we have kept your beautiful young wife up too late with our old men’s games.”
Lucy extended her hand and begged him to sit again.
He took her hand in one of his gloved hands and the skin of whatever animal the glove was made of was warm and slick on her fingers. She had the oddest sensation that she was touching human skin, and she had to keep the shudder from her voice.
“You’re so kind Monsieur Philippe. Please join us again soon.”
“Ah, yes, I most certainly will, beautiful Madame Lucy.”
Behind his thick, smudged lenses, his irises and lashes seemed enormous and false, as though they belonged to a doll in a dirty shop window. He stared, his eyes so full of moist pleasure and want that she looked quickly away to Randolph. What did he think of the way Monsieur Philippe was looking at her? The man had been obsequious all evening, but the increasing amounts of liquor had loosened his tongue, and now his discretion. She couldn’t wait to get out of the room, and for Monsieur Philippe to leave their suite.
Randolph kissed her neck, and she turned into him in a happy fog of half-sleep. Each night she reveled in the new habit of their lovemaking, wondering why no one had ever told her there were such pleasures in marriage, and now she sought his lips and let the rising tension of her body carry her to wakefulness. His breath came quickly, and while a part of her wanted the beginning of their lovemaking to be as languid as she liked it to be, she didn’t attempt to slow him.
“Lucy, make me the happiest of men.” His words were hot in her ear and he had untied the front of her gown and his hand massaged her breast. When he gently squeezed her nipple, she felt the twinge all the way to her foot. Her head was filled with the scent of him, and the weight of his body against hers made her feel safe.
In the next moment he took that safety away as surely as if he had abandoned her on a dark Paris street.
He pulled away slightly. Lucy looked up to see the reflection of the flame of the candle on the bedside table on two circles of glass.
“What is—Randolph?”
He put his hand to her lips and shushed her quietly.
“If you love me, Lucy. It will all be over in a few minutes.” Whether Monsieur Philippe heard him or not, she neither noticed nor cared. Every sensuous feeling in her body fled, driven away by a flood of revulsion and fear. As soon as she had realized that Monsieur Philippe was also in their bedroom, she understood.
“I won’t!”
“My Lucy. I beg you, my love. Please listen.”
She could feel the other man watching, but he didn’t speak.
Randolph closed the small distance between them and firmly gripped her shoulder when she tried to wriggle away. Now his whisper was fierce.
“He knows things about me. There is money involved. A lot of money. I’ll be ruined, Lucy.”
“Nothing is worth this. Dear God, Randolph. I’m your wife!”
“And that’s why only you can help me. Please, Lucy.”
There was emotion in Randolph’s voice that she hadn’t heard before.
“My parents.”
“I don’t want you to be shamed. No one will ever know. You will save me. Just tonight. Only tonight.”
Still, Monsieur Philippe stood silently by. Now she was certain that she could smell him.
“And if I won’t?” She had defied her father, and her mother. Only a few weeks earlier, every action she had taken was weighed against what they would say or do. But now here was Randolph, challenging her. No. Not challenging. Begging. Asking for the one thing she could give him.
He said nothing, but watched her.
She turned her face away, to the window.
Though her face was still turned away—her only defense, staring at that blank, blue velvet square of Parisian sky—Monsieur Philippe thanked her profusely when he had finished. He apologized for the use of the condom, but he would not, he said, want to interfere with the happy future of his good friend, Randolph.
It was an odd speech, and she heard it with the detachment of one who was dead. When she did not respond, he sighed and bid her good night.
Only when she heard him move across the room and the door open did she turn her head. Her neck ached along with much of the rest of her body, but she raised her head from the pillow as the light from the outer room sliced its way through the darkness.
It was Randolph who opened the door for the smaller man. Randolph who was standing just inside the door. Randolph who had watched his young wife being used by the odious little man who had not taken his gloves off since he arrived.
Chapter 19
LUCY
May 1900
Lucy held the baby close as she descended from the train car, looking for her sister, Juliet, on the nearly empty platform. But Terrance was the only familiar face. She was already disconcerted by the fact that she hadn’t recognized a single passenger getting on the train in Charlottesville when they had stopped there, and she had the sense that she was returning home a stranger. They had been gone for eleven months, but it felt to her like as many years. She had left Old Gate as Lucy Searle, and returned as Lucy Bliss, the jaded wife of Randolph, and mother to two-month-old Michael Searle Bliss, the child she carried in her arms.
Even the carriage Terrance had brought to meet them was new to her, already bearing the Bliss coat of arms—blue and white, with three sheaves of wheat on the shield—which Randolph had researched when they arrived in London from Paris. The ostentatiousness of the coat of arms, even though its placement on the panel closest to the right front wheel was discreet by Randolph’s standards, mortified her. Terrance, too, was different. She hadn’t known him, really, but given the number of letters and telegrams that he and Randolph had exchanged while they traveled, she understood how Randolph relied on him. He had shaved his head and seemed even more reticent than before. As she crossed the station platform, he touched his hat deferentially. However it wasn’t her face he was watching, but the bundled child in her arms. As his steady gaze moved to a point behind her, where their luggage was being unloaded, she felt her face grow warm. What did he know about her? About the child?
She ached to go straight to her parents’ house, but she knew her mother would receive her coldly, if she received her at all. Faye had written that Selina would not talk about her in public, or even in private to her good friend, Pinky, Faye’s mother. And if someone brought up Lucy’s name to her, she would immediately change the subject to her younger daughter, Juliet. Lucy had written Juliet to tell her when they’d be arriving, but she knew that their mother and father sometimes intercepted her letters. Very occasionally a letter would get through, and Juliet would write back. But it was like two people having a conversation that could only be made sense of about a third of the time. Lucy suspected that her parents let a few letters get through on purpose so that Juliet could answer and Lucy would keep writing. Randolph had told her that it was the way spying worked: Enemies kept tabs on each other by sharing small amounts of information. That way the tension was slowly released. Lucy could feel the tension coming from her parents all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Tension, or perhaps simply disgust. Both she and Randolph had written to her parents and had received no reply. Randolph complained that theirs was the worse kind of uncivilized behavior. Lucy bit her tongue at that remark. Randolph had no right to call
anyone else’s behavior uncivilized.
It seemed an ill omen to Lucy that it should begin to rain as the carriage made its way up the lane to Bliss House. Terrance had rolled down and secured the rain curtains on the sides of the carriage, but she could still see the house beyond the horses. The trees along the drive were swathed in clouds of wet, unearthly green. Randolph leaned forward hungrily as though he were about to greet a lover whom he hadn’t seen in many years. The baby began to cry in his basket.
Odette and Mason, whom she hadn’t yet met, stood with umbrellas at the edge of the drive. She was sad not to see Carrie, who had written that she could not get along with Terrance, and had found a position in another part of the state. Behind Odette and Mason, the rain had seemed to wash all color away from the enormous house. The yellow brick now looked jaundiced, and the windows reflected the gray sky like mirrors streaked with water. Why hadn’t she ever noticed the iron works around the windows and surrounding the roof? Upright and wickedly sharp, they matched the length of iron fence standing at the front of the garden like a row of fierce soldiers.
When the carriage stopped and Randolph got out to help her down, she looked up at the second-story windows, remembering the woman and girl who had watched her from over the gallery railing. But she could see no one in the windows now, and she felt terribly relieved.
“Welcome, Missus Bliss. Shall I take Master Michael?” Odette reached with her free arm to take the basket containing the crying baby. He had been quiet for most of the train ride, unless his diaper had been wet or he was hungry. Lucy was grateful every day that he was a calm child.
Reflexively, Lucy pulled the basket to her. It had been her understanding with Randolph that she should be the only one to care for Michael Searle, but once they were on the train, he had begun talking about Odette as someone they might trust to care for him. She wondered at his change of heart. It was critical that no one handle their son whom they couldn’t trust to be completely discreet. There were things about Michael Searle, about his birth and his delicate, imperfectly formed body, that, if widely known, would make pariahs of them all.
“His name is Michael Searle. Not just ‘Michael.’” Lucy’s tone was harsh, but Odette was unfazed.
Lucy had suggested to Randolph that her parents would have some mercy on her—on them both—if they named the baby after her father.
“Mercy for me from the Reverend Edward Michael Searle? Well, that’s sure to get me into heaven, my dear.” He was sarcastic, but still relented, though unpleasantly. “My next son, assuming he is fully capable of becoming a man, will be better named Randolph than this poor waif, I reckon.”
He had looked down at the baby, whose mild features already were more like Lucy’s than his own, with a mixture of pity and dislike.
Lucy was anxious. “Let’s go inside. It’s miserable out here, and no good for the baby.”
“I say wait!” Randolph stopped at the front door of the house, barring anyone from entering.
The baby cried louder. In the woods, some bird also cried out as though in answer.
“I intend to carry my bride over the threshold. The last time she was here, she was not yet my bride.”
“Randolph, please.” Michael Searle’s cries were agony for Lucy.
“Take that basket, Odette. In fact, take Michael Searle on into the house. All this damp can’t be good for his lungs. I’m sure Missus Bliss will agree.”
Reluctantly Lucy gave the basket to Odette, who hurried into the house. She disappeared with the baby into the shadowy hall.
“A little re-enactment of our arrival at our suite at the Astoria, my love. Except this is a place you’ll never need to leave.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Lucy tried a smile. The girl who had come to the Walpurgisnacht party, and to hear Hannah Tanner speak, would have thought of this moment as a happy dream. She willed herself to be that girl once again. “Mind your gloves, Randolph. The hem of my dress is certainly wet.” It was one of her traveling dresses from Paris. One of her treasures. If Randolph’s words were true, and she were to never leave, she might never have cause to wear it again.
Randolph lifted her effortlessly into his arms despite his fifty-plus years, and they stepped over the threshold and into the house. The chandelier above the great hall was lighted, along with all the lamps in the galleries. Every table held an elegant arrangement of flowers. There were more flowers than she had ever seen in one place, including their suite in Paris. The air was filled with the lazy scent of lilies and hyacinths.
Despite the presence of the servants, and Terrance, who was obviously not quite a servant, Randolph kissed her. She returned the kiss, slightly embarrassed, but with a sense of relief that the house was not nearly as grim as she had feared. It had surely been her own fears and worries that had made the idea of returning fraught with foreboding. No stranger awaited to share her bed or ruin her sleep. (Monsieur Philippe had returned one night, just before they had left Paris, and there had been no pretense of dinner. Knowing what would happen the moment Randolph had mentioned his name, Lucy had gotten quite drunk on champagne, so that the nightmare of his lovemaking would be somewhat dulled.)
When Randolph had had his moment—and it certainly was his moment—he set her down, and with a final kiss on her cheek, told Terrance to please show Missus Bliss to her room, and then to the nursery. For Odette had, indeed, disappeared with Michael Searle.
Randolph marched off to the library with the comment that he had nearly a year’s business to take care of, and that Mason should please see to the rest of the luggage and the carriage.
“Mister Bliss has suggested that you take the floral bedroom overlooking the garden, and for you to also use the adjoining room as your morning room.”
Mister Bliss. Lucy had never forgotten that her father had referred to Terrance as Randolph’s bastard that day in the theater. It made sense that Terrance would be better trusted than any other servant if he was, indeed, Randolph’s son.
“No. If Odette has gone to the nursery, I’ll go there now. I know where it is.”
“Very well.” Terrance did not nod or bow, but turned from the staircase and went to help Mason with the baggage.
She would ask Odette where the floral bedroom was, after she’d gotten Michael Searle away from the awful nursery.
How she had dreamed of being chatelaine of Bliss House, imagining it to need a woman’s touch again after Randolph’s decades of absence. In France, he had suggested that she pick out some fabrics and furniture, and he had bought a number of paintings. There were things on their way for the nursery, as well, though she had kept the purchase of them to herself, as Randolph had made no comment about where the baby would sleep, except to say that children belonged in the nursery.
She remembered the nursery only too well. Josiah had protested that nothing had been thrown at them, that Lucy had suddenly ducked away from him, crying out, then seemed to dodge invisible things in the air. “It was pitch dark,” he said. “Otherwise I would’ve known it was you right away. I didn’t see anything.” Perhaps he hadn’t seen anything, after all. He was not a cruel man.
Lucy hurried up the staircase to the second floor, remembering how the galleries had been full of people. Now they belonged to her, and she could spend all the time she wished looking at the paintings or sitting in one of the quiet window nooks with a book. How Juliet would love the house, if only she were allowed to come.
One of the bedrooms she passed on the way to the nursery had its door open and she stopped to look inside. The room felt stale, as though the door had been shut for a very long time, and was only just opened in the past few minutes. Surely this would be Randolph’s room, decorated in muted tones of blue and red and brown. A man’s room. The headboard of the enormous bed was carved with people and animals and images of forgotten lands. Its brutal hunting scenes alarmed her, but not nearly as much as the idea that the house had sat, dormant and lonely, in their absence. She had the sense that
Bliss House did not like to be lonely.
Lucy gasped. “Oh, dear Lord in heaven.”
Odette sat in a painted rocking chair, Michael Searle swaddled in a blanket in her arms. She put a finger to her lips to hush Lucy, indicating that Michael Searle was asleep, or was close to it. Had she changed him before sitting down? Surely, Lucy thought, she would be registering some look of shock.
But Lucy’s horror was at the state of the nursery. If it could even be called that anymore.
Odette whispered. “Before you say anything, you need to know that Terrance wouldn’t let me change the room in any way. He said it was on Mister Bliss’s orders, but I can’t imagine such a thing.”
In her arms, Michael Searle squirmed and yawned, punching one small hand free of the blanket. He gave a sigh and went back to sleep.
After a moment, Odette got up slowly, laid Michael Searle in a hand-hewn cradle resting near the rocker, and loosened the blanket around him, as the room was warm.
She came to stand near Lucy, still keeping her voice low.
“I got to know Carrie some before she left here, and she said that neither you nor your mother would put up with having a baby in this room, because it’s more than just the furniture being old. And these . . .” She indicated the cases full of taxidermy animals, the dead butterflies, and the plethora of staring dolls.
Lucy shuddered. It was no different from the first time she’d seen it, and it was even more alarming during the day. What sort of mother would let her daughter play in such a place?
Mad, they’d said. The little girl had been mad.
“No. I didn’t think you would want him in here. But I had no choice. I hope you understand.”
The Abandoned Heart Page 17
