Yes. Lucy understood. She wanted to think that Randolph—like so many men—had no feeling for the comfort and care of children. But she knew it was something far worse: that he was punishing her and Michael Searle. He blamed her for Michael Searle’s deformity, and he had done from the moment the doctor, holding the baby, had called him into a corner, just out of Lucy’s view.
“He’ll stay in my room until this room is changed or we fix up another.”
“You don’t want him in this room, Missus Bliss. No child should ever sleep in this room again, no matter what changes you make to it. No, ma’am.”
“We’ll see.” But even as she said the words, she thought of Randolph’s daughter and Amelia. How they had stood outside this room, watching her.
The cradle wasn’t heavy, and Odette followed with it easily as Lucy carried the sleeping Michael Searle down the gallery and across to her new bedroom. There she had Odette replace the long, upholstered bench at the foot of the bed with the cradle. In London, Randolph had insisted that the baby sleep in the second bedroom of their suite, so that Lucy might be a convenient wife, as she was no longer pregnant.
Now, in their own house, she had her own room, and she was not going to let Randolph get between her and her child. And Michael Searle certainly wasn’t going to grow up in that hellish nursery.
A few days later, Lucy’s first communication from her family came in the form of a note from Juliet. From its scrawled nature, Lucy understood that she had written it in haste. Their parents would not let her come to Bliss House under any circumstances. There was no mention of when they might see each other, though Juliet did not say she had been forbidden from seeing her sister completely. She wrote that she was desperate, too, to see her new nephew, and that she couldn’t believe that she was already an aunt.
“It is my dearest wish that I see him before he has his first tooth. We shall make it very soon, I do hope.”
Lucy folded the note and put it in the drawer of her writing desk, too dismayed to answer. At lunch she told Randolph about it.
“The good reverend is going to make you pay for your indiscretion. I’m sorry for you, my dear, but I have no interest in seeing either of your parents again.”
“What if the rest of the town follows their lead? What if we are ostracized?”
Randolph smiled. “It is we who do the ostracizing. I will not be extending any more invitations to them. But it’s a shame about Juliet. She is a sweet girl.”
Juliet was chaste and faithful.
Wasn’t I once chaste? What if Juliet were to know what I have become? She pushed the thought from her mind. There were no Monsieur Philippes in Old Gate.
Lucy toyed with her napkin, reluctant to mention the nursery, but she felt she had to.
“Randolph, you know that I’ve put Michael Searle in my room for now.”
“He is young. If that seems good to you, that’s acceptable.”
“I was thinking that we should change the nursery into another guest room. Perhaps paint it a nice, sunny yellow. Freshen it and get some new furniture. You know, fewer cabinets and things, and perhaps add a pair of single beds and a small seating area near the front windows. It has such a lovely view of the drive.”
Randolph shook his head. “No. Change anything else you like, but I prefer that the nursery remain as it is. Whether the boy uses it or not is of no concern to me.”
“But those animals! There are things in that room—” It wasn’t so much the animals, but the presence in the nursery. The girl, Tamora, and Amelia. Lucy knew they were still there, though she hadn’t yet seen them again.
“I won’t discuss it, Lucy. You have a dozen other rooms in this house that you can alter to your liking. That one stays as it is.”
“That’s madness. Why would you want to keep those things? They’re hideous.”
He put down his fork and looked at her with what could only be described as amused malevolence. It was a look she had never seen in his eyes and it frightened her.
“Perhaps when you are old and hideous, my dear, I should pitch you on the trash heap. Or have you stuffed and kept in the room with the other animals.”
Lucy stood up from the table and would have stalked from the room in disgust and anger if she hadn’t noticed Terrance standing in the open doorway to the kitchen. She took a deep breath, and said, “Excuse me.” As she left the room, she heard Randolph chuckle behind her, then ask Terrance to bring him a whiskey and his humidor.
At least, Lucy thought, he hadn’t insisted that she move Michael Searle back into the nursery. A small mercy.
Randolph issued the first invitation of their new tenure in Bliss House the very next day, inviting a few of his favorites to dinner and to see the lantern slides he had purchased on their trip. Most were of Paris and the sites of the exposition, which had been about to open before they left for London.
Terrance had engaged two sisters, one as housemaid and the other as cook, to help now that Odette was spending more time with Michael Searle.
Lucy had approached Odette carefully, inviting her into the morning room for a cup of tea, with Michael Searle in his cradle nearby. She quietly impressed the dire need for confidentiality, and, perhaps, the idea that Randolph might mete out some punishment if she were to spread any tales or lies about Michael Searle.
“Missus Bliss, Mason and I have been at Bliss House a long time. I’ve had care of a child, and I’ve had care of secrets. And I have made sure to keep both most carefully. I have never truly liked Mister Bliss, but our employment has depended on it. But I do like you. What I see in that cradle is one of God’s precious children. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
That had been that. She treated Michael Searle with a firm tenderness that Lucy had never before seen in a servant.
Faye and Josiah were the first to arrive for the dinner party. Lucy had been nervous. She had hosted small soirées in London and Paris (Monsieur Philippe notwithstanding) for acquaintances and business associates of Randolph’s, but never in her own home. Bliss House was her home. It had to be because she had no other.
With the exception of Faye and Josiah, the crowd was older, but the women were particularly kind, and while they weren’t of her parents’ set, they were all from the county. Douglas, Randolph’s brother, and his wife, Mary, had come to stay. Mary was a faded beauty who sat at Randolph’s right hand. Faye whispered that she had once been something of a siren, but she’d grown enormously fat and now rarely left her house. They were at least as wealthy as Randolph. The rumor was that they were even wealthier, but such a thing didn’t matter at all to Lucy. She was much more worried about what they would think of her.
After dinner, when the women had retired to the salon and the men were having cigars in the dining room, Faye took Lucy aside.
“I know it’s telling tales out of school, Lucy-pie, but your mother looks dreadful. When I saw her at church on Sunday, she looked as though she’d been crying buckets. Juliet says she and your father are fighting all the time. He’s worried that you and Randolph haven’t baptized that precious little lamb of yours.”
“If they’re so worried, they should come here. They won’t even let Juliet visit me.” It was anguish to hear of her parents’ upset. She had tried to think of them as cruel. They had certainly seemed so at an ocean’s distance. But they were still her parents.
Faye arranged a stray bit of lace on Lucy’s Paris gown. “I could kill you for this dress. Every man in the dining room was looking at you as though they wanted to bend you over the table and ravish you.”
Lucy knew it was the champagne talking, but she was still amused.
“You used to dress like such a mouse. It’s like you came back from Paris a libertine.” Her face was very close now, and Lucy could see a gossamer line of perspiration along the baby curls at the top of Faye’s forehead. “Are you a libertine, darling? What did you and Randolph get up to there in Paris? I bet you did naughty things.”
Now Lucy was un
comfortable, and she remembered how Faye and Josiah had stayed long with the naked dancers beneath the Maypole. She looked away. “Oh, Missus Lovejoy’s cordial glass is empty. Where has Terrance gone?”
“Fiddlesticks, Lucy. Don’t be such a frump. I saw you, remember? I know the things that Randolph likes. Josiah and I were coming here long before you.”
“Please, Faye. Not now. You’re being silly.”
“Why no May Day party this year? Are you spoiling the fun?”
Exasperated, Lucy excused herself without responding, leaving Faye to smile knowingly and take herself off to sit with a trio of women who had settled to a game of cards in the corner. Lucy tended to Missus Lovejoy’s cordial herself, and then rang the bell for Terrance, who eventually arrived looking a bit bored.
“Will you please tell my husband that now would be a good time to begin the lantern show? Is everything ready?”
Terrance nodded and strode off in his steady, unhurried way.
Perhaps because the theater was the place where Randolph had first taken her hand for more than just a casual greeting, Lucy was pleased to have suggested that they use it for the showing of the lantern slides they’d bought on their trip. Terrance had set up the tightly woven silk screen and had Mason assist him in arranging the chairs.
This night, with the majesty of the freshly aired house, and the recent kindness of Randolph, Lucy was almost proud to be both mistress of the house and Randolph’s wife. He took her arm to lead the party upstairs, and the sound of the guests’ voices made her feel terribly gay. Michael Searle was already asleep with Odette watching over him. Lucy felt like a young woman again, and not at all like a drudge, as her mother had often complained that motherhood had made her.
Lucy sat near the front, beside Faye. Randolph started with slides of London, of Buckingham Palace and the palace guards, and of the Tower of London. Then there was Paris: the Tuileries, the Eiffel Tower, shining new automobiles, the massive halls built for the exposition, images of foreigners in turbans and kimonos and cowboy garb. Randolph gave a running commentary, describing what the sites had truly been like. Several of the guests had never left Virginia, and Randolph was happy to show off his knowledge.
It was among the slides of people from far-flung lands that other, more vulgar slides suddenly showed up on the screen.
Lucy wanted to look away, but she found herself transfixed. The images seemed to have been shot in the secret club in Paris to which Randolph had taken her. Early in the evening at the club, there had been only live music, but after midnight the music moved offstage, into the wings. Onstage were couples and groups of people, their bodies oiled or even painted, writhing, some dancing. Many of the women were of other races, and alarmingly beautiful, and the men were white, with the exception of a few, and played at cruelly abusing the women. Their sex acts had been mostly simulated. “All smoke and mirrors and nothing real,” Randolph had complained. Lucy, excited, and more than a little ashamed of her willingness to watch the shows, had worn a veil when they visited the club a second time.
But what was happening in these slides did not look simulated. The pleasure looked real. The violence looked real. The pain looked more than real.
Lucy gasped when she saw Monsieur Philippe’s face—for surely it was him. And the woman—her pale body contorted beneath his whip—looked too much like Lucy herself. Beside her, Faye tittered. Surely everyone now thought that it was her. She wanted to sink into the polished floor of the half-dark room.
Around her, the other guests were restless. Occasionally one of the men made a low, appreciative sound in his throat. Each time the screen went blank for an upcoming slide, Lucy steeled herself for some new shock. What was Randolph thinking? Finally, one of the men groaned outright. Douglas, Randolph’s brother, shouted, “Enough! Turn it off, Randolph.”
There was a look of true fear on the face of the man now pictured on the screen. He’d been stripped of his clothes, and one of the women in the small group half surrounding him held the leash of some muscular hound who strained at the man, its teeth bared, its enormous hackles fanned along its neck. Somehow, Lucy knew that the next slide would show the man being savaged. Yet as she stared, she noticed that the faces of the three men in the slide—though different—all bore a remarkable resemblance to one another. The same broad forehead and strong nose. The same full lips and aggressive brow. They all looked like Randolph. But when she blinked, the men were no longer similar at all.
Abruptly, Randolph extinguished the lantern, and for a long moment the silence of the room was so deep that Lucy thought she might disappear forever inside of it.
The party ended quickly afterward, with Randolph uncharacteristically quiet. Lucy wasn’t sure how he had expected the evening to end, but she suspected that he had thought to titillate them with the pornographic images. Everything she knew about him told her that he loved the attention, loved to shock people. How could she have thought that first May Day celebration so sophisticated? Since Paris and the clubs, and the vile Monsieur Philippe, she had come to see such things as tawdry, destructive fantasies. But she bore them for Randolph’s sake. Even after all he’d made her bear in Paris, and his cruel joke about having her stuffed, she was still his wife, and had now borne his child.
After the guests were gone, and she had been to her room to give Michael Searle his late-night feeding, she knocked softly on Randolph’s bedroom door. When he didn’t answer, she turned the door handle to find it was unlocked. Randolph stood in the dark, looking out the window.
“Can you not sleep?”
“We shouldn’t have come back here. We should have stayed in England, or settled somewhere else. I still have the house on Long Island. Would you like to live there?”
Lucy went to stand beside him. Despite the summer heat, his bedroom was much cooler than hers, and she shivered in her gown. It was almost as cool as a late fall night.
“People change, Randolph. Maybe the slides weren’t to their taste.”
He turned toward her. “They don’t want me to be happy.”
“Randolph, they’re your friends. Of course they want you to be happy. Josiah wouldn’t leave you alone until he saw you smile again tonight. Isn’t that friendship?”
“You don’t feel it, do you? It’s your innocence. You won’t let go of it. I think you deliberately misunderstand me. You’re stubbornly young, Lucy.”
She didn’t argue further. Didn’t he know that she had been trying to let go of her innocence for as long as she could remember? But this it of which he spoke. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it might be. The strange element that had crept into his voice, and his face, exposed by the risen moon through the window, seemed a lot like suspicion. But what terrible thing could he possibly suspect of her?
Chapter 20
LUCY
May 1900
The message from her mother saying she would call the next day sent Lucy into a panic. Had she already heard gossip about the previous night’s party? Lucy had wanted to go to church the previous Sunday to speak with her, but had been afraid that her father might condemn her, as well as Randolph, from the pulpit. She hoped that a blessing from her mother would ease their way, even though she knew that having her mother come to Bliss House was like asking a snake to bite her.
Selina Searle had been angry for an entire year. Anger piled on anger.
How could she make her mother love her again? It had come to her that, if she told her mother the truth about Michael Searle, she might gain her sympathy, and at the same time save herself. Randolph barely acknowledged the poor child. Lucy could not be mother, father, and loving grandparent to him. She needed someone to share the burden of her child’s life.
From the first moment she had held him in her arms, she had loved him. He fitted perfectly against her and when she held him to her breast, he had suckled hungrily as she stroked the fine down on his delicate skull.
It was a skull that Randolph had suggested should be crushed
into something formless. Crushed out of existence. How she had pleaded for the child’s life behind the closed door of her bedroom of the London townhouse they had let. Randolph said he didn’t trust the London hospitals and had engaged a private doctor and nurse to come when it was time.
Just after the birth, the doctor and Randolph had stood in the corner of the bedroom, whispering. Arguing. The hard-looking nurse had cleaned and swaddled the crying baby and was about to give him to Lucy when the doctor waved her away. Randolph looked over at Lucy, and then the baby, his face wearing a look of incomprehension. Randolph, who was always in command of himself and of everything around him. His fists were clenched, his eyes were wide. Thank God she had insisted on being awake during the birth. What might they have done if she had been asleep?
At last, her mother would know. A kind of insurance for Michael Searle’s life.
She dressed herself carefully, putting on a day dress in her mother’s favorite color of daffodil yellow. A feminine color. A color that made her mother smile. She dressed her hair in a proper bun, piling it full and round in the latest Gibson Girl style. Her mother, old as she was, always wore the latest of everything.
Standing in the shadow outside of her bedroom, she could hear Terrance’s low, confiding voice and her mother’s terse answers.
Selina was never concerned about being pleasant to servants, a fact that Lucy knew plagued her father, who was often kinder to servants than he was to his own family. Juliet had written that he had been so fond of sweet Carrie that he wondered aloud why she did not even try to return to the house after Lucy’s elopement. He did not blame her. Lucy was surprised, too, that Carrie hadn’t even tried to go back to her parents’ house when she’d unexpectedly left Bliss House months before Lucy and Randolph returned to Old Gate.
The Abandoned Heart Page 18
