Instead, it would end her marriage.
After a short excursion to Biarritz, Esme and Hiram spent the second half of March in Paris. Hiram didn’t blanch at the bills for gowns and shoes that arrived at their room in the Ritz, and he soon gave Esme an even more valuable gift. Sabine, a maid at the hotel, had been helping Esme with her hair in the evenings, and Esme had been charmed by the girl’s cautious smiles and tidy precision. Within a few days, they’d developed a conspiratorial rapport, with Esme trying to explain what she wanted in broken French, and Sabine responding in equally atrocious English. When Hiram walked in on them laughing one evening, he asked Sabine if she’d ever traveled outside of France.
“Non, monsieur,” she replied. “I would like, one day.”
“Any interest in seeing America? My wife is in need of a lady’s maid.”
Sabine looked shocked but pleased, and Esme felt like a little girl whose father had surprised her with a pony for Christmas. Her own maid, and a French one, at that! Hiram consulted the hotel’s manager, who summoned Sabine’s father, and they all met in the manager’s office a few days later. Holding a shabby hat, looking ill at ease beside the elegantly polished manager, Sabine’s father said her family was grateful for the offer but needed some time to consider it. Hiram explained exactly how generous he was prepared to be, and when the manager translated the amount Hiram was offering, Esme immediately recognized the expression on Sabine’s father’s face. It was the same one she’d seen on her own father, on the rare occasions the factory showed a profit. It was soon agreed Sabine would join the Harpers when they departed for London a week later.
Sabine’s sweet yet deferential presence was a boost to Esme’s confidence, but her new companion couldn’t make up for her steadily increasing frustration. All the shopping and sightseeing only underscored how little Hiram and Esme had in common. Esme loved music and chatty gatherings; Hiram was most content reading alone. In Philadelphia, he’d escorted her to events because it was his duty to mingle with their social circle. In Europe, he felt no such obligation.
“Tea with the Deauvilles? I hardly know them.”
“That’s the point, darling. We’re having tea in order to get to know them better.”
“Isn’t that best left to you women? No need to force the husbands into it.”
Esme began attending events alone, defiantly, until she realized Hiram didn’t object because he didn’t care. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even glance up from his book when she came back to their room. It wasn’t until she started talking that he’d lift his head with a distracted “Hmm?” It was a sound she came to loathe.
In London, Esme found she wasn’t the only wife who socialized without her husband. Some of the women she met were outspoken suffragettes who believed they should be able to do whatever they wanted, the law be damned. It was an attitude Esme privately admired but would never have announced in public; she was content on the fringes of notoriety rather than at its center. And one of the most satisfying ways to be daring was to flirt outrageously with other men.
Charlie Van Hausen seemed crafted for that very purpose. Fresh out of Harvard, son of a financier father and socialite mother who knew all the right people on both sides of the Atlantic, he had the airy confidence of a privileged Boston upbringing. A more sophisticated version of John Moss, Esme thought, out to enjoy himself above all else. The kind of boy she might have fallen for, before she was married, and who would have most certainly broken her heart.
They chatted over dinner at Lord Riverton’s Belgravia mansion, then crossed paths again at a concert hosted by the American ambassador. Esme had overdressed in a wool dress and thick stockings and began to feel faint in the crowded, stuffy room. She whispered to Hiram that she needed some air, and he nodded without looking at her. Esme slipped out of the reception hall into a circular waiting room, where she felt slightly better but still light-headed. She asked a passing footman for directions outside, and he pointed her to the back terrace.
The night was cool but sticky, the damp air preparing to solidify into rain. The terrace overlooked a formal garden, with a cherub-topped fountain forming the centerpiece of neatly trimmed hedgerows. Esme wondered half-heartedly if she should install a fountain in the garden at home. She had no real interest in landscaping, but she’d have to find some way to fill her days.
“Do you mind?”
Esme turned and saw Charlie behind her, a cigarette tucked between his index and middle fingers. She shook her head, and he pulled a matchbox from his jacket pocket. He lit a match, the flame illuminating his face. Close up, Charlie looked less boyish, with his dark, solemn eyes and enigmatic half smile. He sucked in deeply and then exhaled, turning his head to blow the smoke away from Esme.
“Would you like one?” he asked casually, as if passing the salt at dinner.
Esme laughed in surprise. “Do you know many girls who smoke?”
“You’re hardly a girl, are you? You’re a married woman.”
Esme should have been offended. He was being shockingly overfamiliar, given their slight acquaintance. But she wasn’t at all upset. The way he was looking at her—daring her to enjoy herself—took her back to those debutante days in Philadelphia, when she was the focus around which every party swirled.
“Do you know many married ladies who smoke?” she asked.
“A few,” he said. Again, he brought the cigarette to his lips. Slowly, he drew the smoke in and out, showing her how to do it. “But they don’t tell their husbands.”
Esme wondered if it wasn’t coincidence that brought him outside. Had Charlie seen her leave and followed her? She liked the thought of being pursued.
“All right, then,” Esme said decisively. “I’ll try.”
She had never understood how men could breathe in smoke, and the process was as unpleasant as she’d imagined. But Esme very much enjoyed the ritual surrounding it. She liked the way Charlie grinned when he handed her a cigarette and demonstrated how to hold it. The way she had to lean in when he held out the match. The gestures lured them together, and when Esme winced and coughed, Charlie took the cigarette from her fingers and finished it himself. She looked at his lips, pressing down where hers had been only seconds before. The silence between them wasn’t empty, as it was with Hiram. There was almost too much Esme wanted to tell Charlie, but she didn’t know how to start.
The distant sound of applause carried out from the residence.
“Your first cigarette,” Charlie said, raising the stubbed end in the gesture of a toast. “Congratulations.”
“Two puffs,” Esme said. “I don’t know if that counts.”
“You can have it both ways,” he said. “You can say, in all truth, that you’ve never smoked a cigarette, because you didn’t finish. But if you ever want to shock your society friends, you can say you have.”
Charlie had hit upon the very conundrum that tortured Esme every day: Would she be the respectable, dull wife that Hiram expected, or the risqué wife who embarrassed him?
“Better not to say anything at all,” Esme said.
“It’ll be our secret.”
As Charlie looked at her, it felt like they’d agreed to something, but she wasn’t sure what. Esme nodded briskly and turned; she didn’t want to be seen walking in with him. Concertgoers were already milling in the hallway. As Esme looked for Hiram, she also kept a discreet eye on Charlie, making sure she knew where he was, even after she was back at her husband’s side. When Hiram said he was ready to leave, Charlie was across the room, so she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. But that didn’t matter. She was quite certain she’d see him again.
And she was right. Charlie belonged to a set of rich young Americans who thought nothing of sailing off to Europe on a whim, steamships and railways enabling their twentieth-century version of a grand tour. They were always in motion, to the theater or day trips in the countryside, and invitations to these excursions began arriving at Esme’s hotel. Hiram, busy setting up a partner
ship with a British bank, encouraged Esme to go without him. It was all aboveboard: Esme and Charlie were never alone together, and she made sure he wasn’t the only object of her flirtatious remarks. Somewhere along the way she started calling him Charlie, but he never addressed Esme as anything but Mrs. Harper.
A week before Esme was due to sail home, she and Hiram were invited to a house party at the country home of Lady Tiddle, née Sarah Neuberger, a distant cousin of Charlie’s who’d bagged herself an English aristocrat in the Gilded Age era of transatlantic marriages. Esme begged Hiram to go, but he had no interest. He had nothing in common with her new friends and thought they were a bad influence. Furious, Esme told him she’d go anyway, though it meant they’d be apart for three days. Later, she would tell herself that what happened that weekend was Hiram’s fault, that she wouldn’t have looked elsewhere for comfort if she hadn’t felt so lonely. Or was that just what she told herself to justify her actions? Esme had been both admonished and spoiled all her life, told to act a certain way but never punished when she didn’t. She was ripe for corruption.
Over tea on the afternoon they arrived, Esme and Charlie talked companionably, like old friends. She couldn’t help comparing him to Hiram, who spoke to every woman—including her—with the same aloof politeness. Charlie’s attention shone on Esme like a spotlight; he remembered comments she’d mentioned in passing and noticed when she tried out a new hairstyle. And the more interest Charlie showed in Esme, the more interesting she found him.
The next day, all the men but Charlie went shooting.
“I’m a terrible shot,” he said bluntly. “I’ll stay warm and dry indoors, thank you very much.”
The other female guests flitted around him like butterflies drawn to a rare, exotic flower. Charlie enjoyed the attention, entertaining them with stories of his pranks at Harvard, some of which Esme suspected were exaggerated for effect. Charlie caught her eye, acknowledging her doubts, and she took a triumphant pride in being able to understand him with a single look. After luncheon, Lady Tiddle led a tour of the home farm. They spoke to the estate manager for a few minutes, then went to admire the animals. Most of the ladies gathered at the henhouse to coo over a batch of newborn chicks, but Esme saw Charlie leaning over the side of a pen, alone. She walked over and saw he was watching a scrawny young goat, struggling to walk on spindly legs.
“Poor thing,” Esme said. “Look at him, trying so hard.”
“He reminds me of you.”
Esme’s chest tightened in hurt surprise. Before she could respond, Charlie was apologizing, looking genuinely repentant. Whatever he’d meant about the goat, it had slipped out unthinkingly, from the heart. Which made her all the more curious to know what he meant.
“I was watching this fellow,” Charlie said, “and he looks so fragile, like he’s going to topple over any minute, but he keeps on going. And you don’t look anything like a goat. You’re so much prettier”—a compliment Esme would remember and savor later—“but you have that same expression sometimes, when you think no one’s looking. Putting on a brave face, so no one sees how much you struggle.”
The observation was so unexpected, so true, that Esme didn’t know what to say. She stared at the goat and its trembling hooves. Saw herself laughing gaily at parties, while her stomach sank with dread at the thought of returning to the hotel and Hiram. She heard the other women’s voices and the clatter of their footsteps on the gravel path as they headed toward the barn. She and Charlie should join them. She would, very soon.
Not looking at Charlie made it easier to talk. “You’re right. I feel quite lost sometimes.”
“You’ll find your footing soon enough,” he said quietly. “Just like our young friend here. It’s myself I’m not sure about.”
“Yourself?” Esme asked. Charlie wore his confidence lightly, never boastful but accepting attention and praise as his natural due. “I shouldn’t think you have a thing to worry about.”
“Oh, my path’s perfectly clear,” he said, and she knew him well enough by then to catch the resignation in his jaunty tone. “Join the firm with Father, marry a woman picked out by my mother, give my life over to making money, and with any luck, I’ll spend the next fifty years smoking cigars at my club and shaking my head at the state of the world.”
“It sounds like a very bright future.”
“Not to me.”
Esme felt an invisible barrier dissolve. He’d shared this confidence because he trusted her. She suddenly felt ages older. Charlie was young enough to still have choices, unlike her.
“What would you do, if you could?” she asked gently. Esme could picture a thousand futures for Charlie. An explorer in a South American jungle. A bohemian artist sketching in a Parisian café.
“That’s the problem, I’m afraid. I don’t have the slightest idea.”
There was no easy answer to that. Esme was about to suggest they join the others—it seemed the most gracious way to end the conversation and save him further embarrassment—when it began to rain. The downpour was immediate and intense, pummeling them with raindrops sharp as splinters. Esme saw the other women dashing into the barn, a good quarter mile away. Then she felt Charlie’s hand on her upper arm as he pulled her into a nearby shed.
The rain beat down on the roof in a pulsing staccato, and drops of water slipped through the boards onto Charlie’s hair and Esme’s hat. Tools and farm equipment were stacked against the walls and piled on shelves, and there was a lingering odor of mud and rust. The wind had whipped up along with the storm, and Charlie slammed the door shut to stop the water blowing inside. As soon as they were alone, in that tight, hushed space, Esme thought of John and the tree and the secret kiss. Charlie was watching her the same way John had watched her, with a tentative smile. But this time, Esme was the one who stepped forward first, and she was the one who slid her hands around Charlie’s waist.
The first kiss was hesitant, a tremor before the earthquake. His lips asked a question—Are you sure?—and she answered. Yes. Esme had never known kisses could summon such urges. Desire passed with a shudder through her chest and stomach, and she wrapped herself around Charlie to bring her pounding heart closer to his. When Charlie’s lips moved along her neck and the base of her throat, they left a trail of heat on her skin. She felt reckless and possessed, thrilled by her own daring.
Charlie was the first to pull away, exhaling in a half laugh, half gasp.
“My God.”
His eyes looked unfocused and wild, and Esme could see he was shaken by what they’d done. Uncertainty weakened her—was he angry?—but such worries were quickly cast aside when he reached up and gently pulled off her hat.
“It’s soaking,” he said, tossing it next to a pile of metal buckets.
“So is your hair.”
Esme smoothed it back from his forehead, and she could tell he was forcing himself to keep still and maintain his self-possession. She placed her hands on his cheeks and waited. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he wrapped his arms around her back and leaned into her.
“Esme.” He lingered over the name, seeming to savor it. “What a marvel you are.”
“A marvelous goat.” She tilted her head and smiled to show she was teasing, and he tapped her nose with one finger.
“I should never have said that. You’re a lamb.” He brushed his lips across her forehead. “Soft and sweet.”
Esme rose to her toes so their mouths could meet. She wanted to hear him talk like this, gentle and confiding, but she also wanted to kiss him, over and over and over.
“I don’t mind,” she whispered between caresses. “That goat’s rather darling.”
“My little goat,” Charlie murmured, and laughter rippled through them like a cleansing force, washing away their hesitation. If love could bloom in a shabby shed, it must be real.
Or so Esme told herself later in the dining room, when she could barely stand to look at Charlie with the memory of his kisses so fresh. The rest of the visit was tor
ture. They managed a few rushed conversations, in the upstairs corridors and while walking the grounds, but it was impossible to find time alone. She had to sit with him at cards, at meals, on the train back to London, laughing gaily as she fought the urge to touch him. Two days before she was due to sail home, Charlie sent a note to her hotel that he’d hired a car for the afternoon, if she could find an excuse to join him. Esme concocted a story about a picnic, knowing Hiram disapproved of meals being eaten anywhere but a table. Strangely, she felt more guilty lying to Hiram than she did kissing Charlie. What she and Charlie had done in the shed was secret, unseen. The story she told Hiram was a more direct betrayal. He trusted her so completely—or cared so little?—that he didn’t even ask where she was going or when she’d be back.
Charlie drove with youthful recklessness, pushing the car as fast as it would go, shouting people out of the way with such cheerful enthusiasm that he received laughs instead of scowls. He’d ordered a hamper of food from his hotel, and they ate on the grounds of an Elizabethan manor outside of the city. Afterward, venturing into a copse of trees, they kissed and tittered as Charlie’s hands wandered over the curves of Esme’s legs. He’d taken off his jacket, and she could feel his shoulder muscles clench when he held her. In Charlie’s embrace, she felt more at ease than she ever had in the silent house she shared with Hiram.
How could she ever go back?
In a week, she’d be in Philadelphia, and Charlie would return to Boston not long after. It was closer than London, but not nearly close enough. Esme had no relatives or friends in Boston; she had no excuse to visit. Before long, Charlie’s mother would have her way, and Charlie would be married, cut off from Esme forever. She could have cried with frustration. Why had she and Charlie only discovered each other now, when they had so little time together? It didn’t occur to her until much later that she had dared to kiss Charlie precisely because he was a relative stranger, in a foreign country. Separate from her real life, and therefore safe.
On a Cold Dark Sea Page 6
