“Truth be told, my grandmother is very ill. I have received word that she is in a worse way than she has ever been, and the time has reaches us where we must begin to face … certain necessities of her passing.”
The captain appeared confused at first, but the confusion soon cleared.
“You mean your inheritance,” he said, as it did, under his breath.
“You must have hated her an awful lot to only return when you know she’s dying.”
Perhaps I would have been justified in simply telling him my personal matters were not his business after all!
“I did not hate her!” I said, a bit too loudly. Perhaps a bit too defensively, as well.
The man smiled.
“What, it was not your grandmother who has kept you from returning to London all this time?”
“No, of course not, not her!”
I suddenly felt my cheeks redden. I’d fallen into a trap, to be certain. The captain leaned back, knowing he had gleaned more from me than I wanted to share. I chided myself inwardly. Perhaps had I not struggled so long over how I did in fact feel about my grandmother, I would not have been blind to this man’s not-so-subtle machinations.
“You know,” the captain said, “once when I was much younger than I am now, I left home as well. I was gone for a long time. I had many adventures. And if anyone had asked, I would say simply that I wanted adventure. But that was not true. No, no, a woman I loved dearly from my village had married another man, and I wanted to be far away from them.”
I did not comment. I did not lend any credence to his assumptions.
“I suppose this is not such an interesting story for you,” he continued. “But I only wish to tell you that when I did return, it was not so very bad as I had feared. I had imagined that the pain would haunt me, and that all these years would mean nothing.”
“And it was not that way?” I asked him, without meaning to sound invested.
“Oh no, the pain was there. But so was the life I’d led without her. And pain will find you eventually, even if you run from it. However many years you make it wait. It’s best just to let it have its day, no?”
I did not thank the man. I did not chastise him. I did not ask him how he knew why I did not want to return to London. I did not wish to think about it. But the rest of the meal was had in relative peace, and with relative lack of engagement on either of our ends. I noticed now, as I had not noticed before, how old he was, and how many years he must have seen from his eyes.
Later, when we were underway, and I was left entirely to my own thoughts, I turned over what he had to say in my mind. It made little sense, now. Pain would find you? Very silly. He simply could have not returned! Pain can’t chase you, at least not very well. At least not if you hide from it in Asia, or the Americas, or the furthest reaches of the continent. That much I knew.
And perhaps pain could be hidden from in London. It was the greatest city in the wide world that I’d yet encountered, after all. Certainly it must have a place or two for concealment, I thought.
And so I dismissed the old man, and thought nothing more of what he had had to tell me. And when we arrived in London, I did my best to chase off the sense of approaching doom that began to well up in me, and told myself that there was no room in this world for women without the nerve to do what they must, and go where they were required.
Chapter 3
Henry
Asking around about Emma would have been easy to do, if I could devise a plausible reason I should need to know. It did not help that I made a rather pronounced habit of avoiding any and all people who might be considered gossips. In general, this made my life better in many ways, not to need to deal with such people, and not tolerating any such gossip from anyone I did fancy spending my time with. But having divorced myself from London’s formidably social gossip scene meant that I could not make a re-entrance into it without becoming a target of it myself.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t been a target of gossip before. All sorts of things were said about me, I knew. And I wouldn’t really dispute any of the charges. They were in large part true, but then they were also in large part flattering, to my mind, and only served to enable me towards further escapades with the sort of woman who fancied herself never quite so alive as when she was just on the edge of moral bankruptcy and disaster. And it likewise aided me with the sort of woman who imagined herself so inherently good that even her exploits into depravity would surely be reforming, even to the worst scoundrel imaginable.
But no, the sorts of rumors I was likely to start if I began asking about Emma were precisely the sort that I wouldn’t want. They were precisely the sort that would paint me as some poor soppy man, stuck in some mostly-misremembered past. Either that or they would make it appear that I was so repulsive that I drove a woman entirely from the scene, and for such a long time.
And if I had been either of those things, why would I want anyone to know about it? There was nothing to be gained in such a reputation, and quite a lot to be lost.
So I decided I must rely on Willy, inasmuch as he was willing to help me, in discovering the truth of Emma’s return. He fed me only little pieces of information. There didn’t appear to be much of interest to find. He told me where she was rumored to be staying, and where she’d been seen dining, and who she had caught up with over tea. But after a week of this, the information he had to give me thinned considerably.
“The scene has moved on, Henry. There’s no scandal to her, and so there’s nothing interesting to say. There are some questions as to why she does not stay in the family manor, but even the theories have run dry on that. Her grandmother is not well. This is all anyone has to say. Why do you insist on continuing to ask?”
I didn’t tell Willy. I’d never told him of Emma. There was no night so bad that mentioning her would make it better, nor any night so good that mentioning her wouldn’t make it worse. What would the point have been? He had such an innocent view of women. He always thought of me as having corrupted each and every one I’d ever met. He never had any sense that corruption or jilting could even begin to go the other way around.
And so I did what I could to put Emma from my mind. It was easy. She’d been so far from my mind for so long, it would be best, and it would be easiest, simply to pretend she’d never returned at all. And so I went out dancing, when I could, and won at cards as often as there were those who would still play with me.
And one night I found a woman, the rarest type of all the sorts of women who tended to be interested in me. She was not married to anyone, nor promised to anyone, so far as I could tell. But she did not seem entirely unaware of the ways of the world. Yet still she spoke to me.
“You shouldn’t be seen talking to me,” I’d told her. I told her of my reputation, in a hope that I could gain something out of her – maybe some interest or at least a firm rejoinder that my interest was misplaced and I could continue my evening elsewhere.
“Is that so?” was all she said. She seemed barely interested, but didn’t walk away.
“Yes, I have a reputation. I shouldn’t wish to deceive you; it isn’t an upstanding one. It’s said I bring women a passion that isn’t good for them.”
This risked a slap. Or at least a shocked look. But she was unflappable.
“And which part of that is untrue, that you give women passion, or that it isn’t good for them?”
I found myself unable to answer. She drew closer to me.
“I am not interested in what others say about you. Do you make these claims of yourself?”
I was again at a loss. But for only a moment.
“I don’t generally have to speak for myself. I find others do it for me quite adequately. And I’m content to let them. If you are content to listen.”
The woman allowed herself the most minute of grins. I had not caught her name. I felt more and more of a suspicion creeping up that I may not even get one. She had dark hair and big, round, brown eyes. When she blinked, she s
eemed to blink slowly, leisurely. That would have made many women look a little bit slow or dim-witted. But this woman was sharp as a barber’s razor, and no one would believe for a moment she was anything but.
“I’m rarely content to listen to what others say. But perhaps, in this case, I might make an exception, if you are willing to stand behind their opinions and offer firm evidence.”
She was whispering now. Usually it was my job to lean in and whisper. To create the intimacy that I now found myself a victim of.
She told me I’d better come with her, and I did not resist. It was a strange feeling. On any other woman I would have thought it an act. I’d have thought she was simply trying to prove something to herself or something her husband. Such women are sometimes dangerous, but usually worth the danger. But with this woman…
I mused to myself. What would she look like under those layers? What would her skin feel like? The way she moved brought my blood up. I felt myself willing the carriage to go faster. Willing it towards its destination.
I couldn’t wait. My hand reached out to her skirts. They were silk. High quality, but also strangely well-used for a woman who seemed so fashionable. I looked to her face for any hint of reservation, any scrap of propriety that would balk at a moment’s dalliance in a carriage before the final event. Such a hint would make the conquest sweeter once I’d overcome it. But I saw only a trace of a smile on her lips.
My hands went down to the bottoms of her skirts and ran up them. Her flesh was so warm beneath! Such a stark contrast to the cool night air that surrounded us, even in the carriage.
I toyed with her. She wanted it, yes. She wanted me. That much was clear. And I would give it to her. But I would force her to wait. Long enough to hammer out that authoritative streak. Until all hint of her being the one in control of this situation had abandoned her and she could do nothing but beg me.
I ran my hands along her thighs, closer and closer to where she desperately wanted them to go. She was breathing faster now. She looked younger, and lost, and innocent in the desire she was losing her way to. She looked at me, her face searching mine for any mercy, for a sign that I would give in and finally give her the touch she was longing for.
And then—
The carriage stopped, abruptly. I slid my hand out from under her dresses swiftly, so that the cabbie would not see what we’d been up to when he jumped down from his perch and opened the door for us.
He came to her side first. And she slid down the steps like water. To the untrained eye, she was a woman composed, but I could see the cracks in her countenance. I’d put them there. The desperation just under the surface. The split focus.
I slid over to her end of the seat, where she had been just a moment before, ready to slide down after her. Already I was thinking of what we would do in the room. Would I begin in the hallway, where anyone might catch us? How would I touch her? How would I refuse to touch her?
And then I looked up. And I saw the sign on the front of the building advertising the name of the business contained therein. And I froze.
“Will you sit there all night?” the girl was asking me. There was a hint of desperation in her voice that would have brought me a thrill of pleasure only a moment before, but now it held no interest to me.
It took a moment for me to gather myself before trusting myself to ask the question on my lips.
“Are you staying here alone?”
The words came out more stilted than I had meant them. The girl had begun to notice that something was wrong. The cabbie, to his credit, saw this conversation was not for his ears, and stepped away.
“No, I have a companion. Why do you ask?”
“What is her name?” My words were lead now.
“Emma.”
And my heart was lead. When I didn’t reply, the woman further clarified.
“Emma Cavendish. Why, have you heard of her?”
I should have lied. I could have lied. But I could not think of a lie.
“I knew her,” I said. The girl laughed, and the sound would have cut me, but I was already so numb to the world I wouldn’t have felt it.
“Such a thing isn’t possible. Emma would never know someone like you.”
The words still managed to cut me, even though the laugh wouldn’t penetrate. And she saw. Damn her, the girl saw how her words affected me and knew she had hit a nerve.
“You did know her, didn’t you?”
It was a question only in show. The woman had me. Somehow she understood entirely, from a paltry scrap of conversation, what I had so carefully concealed.
“She’s never mentioned you. Not ever,” she continued. And it didn’t seem she’d meant the words to be hurtful. She was simply musing, to herself. Working things out in her own mind. I tried not to show the effect they had on me.
It was as though I wasn’t even there anymore. The girl was lost in thought for a long moment, and then turned back to me once she had decided something.
“There’s a masquerade. At Dowager Whitehall’s. I’m told it happens every year. I’m told it’s magnificent. I think you should go.”
And then she was gone. I didn’t have a chance to respond. She simply gave the cabbie a few coins, told him to deliver me safely home, and strode toward the house.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the building as the carriage pulled away. She was in there. I’d known that in an abstract way for nearly a fortnight. But knowing she was there. Seeing the lights in the windows … which one of them was hers?
No, it wouldn’t do. I tried to put the evening out of my mind. I drank a half bottle of wine that providence itself had ensure I had left myself from earlier in the day. The dowager’s masquerade! Certainly I was a feature there. But what good would it be to go there this year, knowing what a mess I would be reduced to? With how I had acted in the carriage, what sort of a man would I be if she didn’t show? Waiting the whole night and ignoring the treasures around me, ripe for the pilfering.
And then how would it be if she did show?
No, it was resolved. I would not go.
But then, as the night of the masquerade grew nearer, I found my resolution was attacked more and more every day by my curiosity. And besides, I rationalized to myself, I would be in a mask. Who would know me? Perhaps no one would.
But she would. The mask I chose, still half telling myself that I was not going to go, was an old one. One she’d seen before.
And so I stood, at Dowager Whitehall’s annual masquerade, looking around the room. Would I even know her?
Yes. My question was answered by a figure at the top of the stairs.
I would know her. I would always know her.
Chapter 4
Emma
London was frustrating. Everything about it was frustrating. It was supposed to feel like home, I knew, but it just didn’t. Everything had either changed or I’d misremembered it. And the most maddening things were things where I couldn’t tell which of the two possibilities was correct.
The conversations I had with old acquaintances were frustrating. There was a seemingly endless stream of them – both of old acquaintances and of their questions. If nothing else, Anna’s advertisement about my return had served to remind everyone (as though they needed reminding in the first place) that I was heir to a fortune. And that simple fact, I’d found, always added an extra layer of disingenuous friendliness to any conversation.
The conversations themselves were often all the same as well. First there was an interest in my travels. They would ask some ill-conceived question, born of a basic misunderstanding perpetuated by who-knows-what and by who-knows-whom. And once I told them anything about my travels, it never seemed to match up with the idea they had in their minds. They expected cannibals and scalping Indians. They expected gypsy curses and Siberian wolves as big as carriages. My stories, exciting though they were to me even in recollection, couldn’t help but disappoint.
And then the person, whoever they were, would share with me
what they had been doing these past several years. Perhaps it was the same for them. Perhaps their stories were interesting to them and I simply was expecting too much. But to me they all sounded just about the same. The lunch, or the dinner, or the tea would then end with them sharing some choice bits of gossip. Half the people I spoke with made a point of telling me that someone named Willy had been asking after me. The tone of voice they employed in imparting this information made it clear they had some scandalous suspicions as to why, but I honestly had never heard of the man.
But beyond all that, beyond the minor inconveniences and my alienation from a half-constructed past, beyond the awkward and too-long conversations, the most frustrating thing about London was trying to get in to see my grandmother.
I’d met our family solicitor, Mr. Burnham, when I was younger, I was sure. I couldn’t quite picture his face, but I knew the name. I had some vaguely positive recollections of him, and it shocked me now why he should be so heartless in this, my hour of need.
My grandmother was like some medieval princess, locked away in a tower. She was in her room in the family home, with only doctors allowed in. The solicitor had been given great powers in executing my grandmother’s estate, apparently even before she passed, and he hesitated not a moment in exercising them.
And because I was not allowed to visit my grandmother, as a precaution, I had not been allowed even to take up residence in my own family home! It was absolutely maddening, for such a man to act so above his station, and to have him provide such a nuisance.
Lucy suggested to me more than once that perhaps he was not the most honorable of solicitors. She had a temptation to see the worst in people’s motives, gained perhaps by her poorer upbringing and our long travels. And I indulged her and told her that I would be very careful to look after my own interests as best as I was able.
But I didn’t see the malice in the man that Lucy did, and a particularly more disturbing suspicion lingered. What if it was, in fact, my grandmother’s own wishes that I should be kept from her? My grandmother had always been a somewhat obstinate woman, it was true, and very sure of her own way. Though I’d never married, and thus never been in a position to receive my full dowry, grandmother had always looked after me and seen to it that I had had at least a passable income to travel on. It was even enough to support Lucy in accompanying me.
Roommates Page 66
