But then, I had always kept to our agreement. Surely she had to know that my return to London wasn’t because I intended to break it. She had to know this, didn’t she?
But there was no way of asking her without being able to see her. And I could not even get an appointment to see the solicitor. I sent countless notes and letters to his office, and had even gone by there once or twice, only to be told by his secretary that Mr. Burnham was not in or could not be seen.
So this left me one option: to wait.
The waiting was the worst of all things. The waiting and the monotony. My maid kept asking if we would be leaving soon. The hotel was nice, but it was not a proper home, and in the absence of a proper home, my mind expected at least adventure.
And to make things the worst, Lucy had begun to become more and more interested in the London night life scene. She hadn’t grown up in London. She didn’t know how very crude and how very judgmental gossips could be. Still she went out, and ate at restaurants and made friends with all manner of people of whom I didn’t approve.
The last straw was an idea she got into her head about attending the Dowager Whitehall’s annual masquerade. It was a boring party. It would be the same people saying the same things. Everyone would be there. Everyone.
I didn’t want to go. I told Lucy this, but she insisted.
“You’ll be in a mask!” she said one day, quite out of the blue. “No one will even know who you are!”
“I won’t be, because I won’t be going,” I replied, without even looking up.
“Haven’t you gone in the past, when you lived in London?”
This was a new strategy for her, so I entertained the conversation further than I otherwise would have. I told her that yes, I had.
“And didn’t you enjoy it?”
I couldn’t very well lie. I didn’t lie to Lucy, so far as I could ever help it.
“Yes, I enjoyed it. When I was a bit younger. When I enjoyed frivolous things like that. I simply can’t see the appeal in it now.”
Lucy scowled.
“I don’t believe that. I’ve known you a long time. You’ve changed, but you haven’t changed that much. And for all the times you’ve insisted to me that I shouldn’t let fear stop me from doing anything I should want to do, here you are making a hypocrite of yourself!”
After that, Lucy went out and left me alone with my thoughts. She was a clever girl, and she knew what she was doing. She always had. And she knew that those words, timed perfectly as they were just two days before the ball, would encourage me to go.
And even still, even with her encouragement and manipulation, I still probably wouldn’t have gone had it not been for a change in my fortunes. I had finally worn Mr. Burnham’s secretary down enough that he was willing to make me an appointment! With this victory won I found myself feeling invincible and ready for any challenge, however daunting it may have seemed.
And so when the Dowager’s masquerade came around, I agreed to go. And when the night was just beginning to pick up and the ball was fully attended, there I stood, on the balcony by the top of the stairs in the Dowager’s grand hall. I was somewhat bored, but a little bit thrilled.
And then I saw him.
Chapter 5
Henry
My legs felt as though they had some invisible force acting upon them. She was there! Right there! She’d been so far away for so long! But it was her. I knew from the dress – the sort of dress she would wear. I knew by the mask – the sort of mast she would choose. I knew by the shape of her body. I would always know that shape. It was burned into my eyes, burned into my mind. And I knew it by that part of her face uncovered by the mask. I knew her lips. Oh, I’d known her lips well! Any lips on a woman that were anything like those lips, and I couldn’t stop kissing them. They were sweeter, somehow, than any other woman’s I’d had since. They were soft. They were gentle but insistent in their kisses. They were…
“Oh, Henry!”
It was Willy’s voice. Here at hand. I wanted yell at him, to tell him that he was interrupting me hopelessly and hadn’t he ever learned any manners at all?
But I couldn’t do that. He had brought company. A young woman. Blonde. With very large … personal assets.
“I didn’t realize you’d come, Henry!” I could see Willy’s smile, and could make out the crinkle by his eyes that always formed when he did. And it was impossible to fault him simply for being friendly. He had no way of knowing that he’d stopped me from—
From what, exactly? What had he stopped me from? From running up the stairs and taking Emma into my arms? From kissing her over and over in front of all these people?
No, nothing like that could possibly happen. Of course it couldn’t. Emma would never have it. Emma knew where I was. Emma could have asked, simply enough, what had become of me. Emma could have come to see me. Emma could have done all this…
And more importantly, Emma could have simply never left.
I felt an anger well up in me. This was an anger I’d long since put to bed. Anger only exists where hope exists that a thing may be changed. That hope had died a long time ago for me, but here Emma was, rekindling it just by standing there in her dress, just by leaning exactly the way she was on the balustrade, the way her hips and her body always appeared the readiest to yield to me.
And that hope had summoned again the anger.
The woman in front of him seemed Willy’s type, but Willy wasn’t the sort to mind. Willy, in fact, was somehow still hung up on that girl he’d met weeks ago. He was imagining her for that eternal domestic position that women were somehow still so eager to take, even when it was with a man of such mediocre stature as Willy. Willy had clearly brought this woman over here with the express interest of introducing her to me, as a lion tamer leaves a meal for his lion. He ran away just after, in a hurry, as though he had somewhere he was meant to be.
And was I not a lion? And were those not her breasts, so round and so large, moving so very much in her corset with each breath she took? And was her wedding ring not loose and rattling, a hated thing on her finger? And was her sly and willing smile not the exact smile I always most wanted to see in my potential prey?
This woman would be mine. And she must have known it. She must have wanted it. So I leaned into her. Let Emma see. Let her watch. Let her imagine what it might have been if she had stayed. Let her hate me. Let her long to feel my hand on her waist even as I put my hand on this disposable woman’s waist. Let her see.
Chapter 6
Emma
This had been a mistake. My breath abandoned me. I couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t I breathe? My hands were on the balustrade already. That was a stroke of luck. I needed it to support me as my lungs searched desperately for breath.
I felt dizzy. I felt dizzy and angry and lost. Who was he? After all this time, who did he even need to be to me?
The captain’s words from the channel ship came back to me. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the pain that is owed you will find you eventually, and I simply had the poor luck to have run straight into mine.
My plan now seemed such a failure. How good a plan could it have been if I could let myself be talked into coming here? To see him, who had once promised that my arms would be the only place where he would ever feel at ease, to see his hands rudely gripping some other girl?
Was it jealousy? I’d never thought myself a jealous girl. And he was not mine! How could I be jealous over something that was not even mine?
I looked down, and the vagaries of language and the oddness of my own reaction pulled my attention away from my own breathing, and let me again find that most basic of rhythms. In, and then out. Over and over. I could regain my ground. I could find again what I was meant to be doing, and who I was meant to be.
And where I was meant to be was anywhere by here.
“Well, of all things! It’s clear to me now that some people find a mask to be a bit too liberating!”
The voice came from right n
ext to me, and it made me jump in my skin. So lost had I been in my own world that I didn’t even realize the woman had grown close to me. She was old, and in a mask herself. I tried to place her from the previous two weeks’ lunches and teas and dinners and found that I could not.
Anyway she seemed a little too pleased. Most women of her age would be making this observation as a judgment, but this woman seemed amused, almost as if…
Yes, of course. This was the Dowager Whitehall herself. I recognized her now from the times in my youth when I had met her, although the passage of time had added the weight of more years to her body, and it showed.
“Yes, that is as may be...”
I could only manage the beginning of the sentence. There was a rebuttal there that I’d intended when I opened my mouth to speak, but I found myself unable to speak it now.
“I say, my dear, do you know him?”
Her concern was a worry. Did she recognize me? Did she know me? What would occur if I said yes? I had not remembered the dowager as a gossip, but it was very well she may have been, after all. Only gossips truly like to throw the sorts of parties most likely to result in gossip.
“Please excuse me,” was all I could say. “You have made a lovely party, Lady, as always.”
The words were hurried, but I couldn’t be bothered by them. My eyes had glanced across the room and alit on Henry again, and the sight of him, sidled up so close to that girl, propelled me with some force in the opposite direction.
There was a back exit to the house, if I remembered correctly. From there I could wander through the garden until I found the gate. And then I would be free of the whole scene, and would find the river. Lucy was nowhere to be seen, but I was sure I would see her the next morning, and I would not ask her how her night had been, and figure out something to tell her about how mine had been when she asked.
But on the landing to the stairs, in front of the stairs that went down to the garden, were four people whom I neither knew particularly well nor whom I liked particularly well, and I found myself entirely stuck. I wasn’t sure about the dowager, but these people I all knew to be most accomplished gossips, and they would most certainly recognize me in my mask.
The only option left to me was up. It was a much less clean escape, but it would do. I’d be able to wait out the party, or at least Henry’s presence at it, in one of the empty rooms, if only I could find one. Then later I would slip down, look around, and pretend to everyone that I’d been there the whole time.
And so I ascended, as quickly as possible, drink still in my hand. And when I reached the next level, I looked down the hall and saw an unassuming door, slightly ajar. Perhaps I could use that as an excuse if I was caught. It was open! I’d only gone into a room that was open in the first place.
In retrospect, I should have heard the voices from inside. They were detectable, certainly, but so concerned was I, and caught up in my own internal confusion, that it wasn’t until I was inside that I saw the room was occupied.
There, laid out before me, was a table with cards on it. And four people, one of whom I vaguely recognized as a slight acquaintance whose name I could not even fully bring to mind.
“Oh, Willy!” he was saying “Here’s your girl Emma now!”
The man he was addressing looked a little bashful. I felt immediately sorry for him, and immediately certain he’d been put up to his questioning. I had a feeling I knew by whom. The woman next to him seemed nice enough, and wise to the whole situation.
“Come play cards with us!”
She was inviting and kind, and I felt incapable of saying no. I took the chair offered, and readied myself for the game.
Chapter 7
Henry
I spoke to the woman as long as I could. That was, as long as anything she had to say bore any interest for me whatsoever. But what would have usually been a prime conquest for me was poisoned. With every word I said, and every word she said, all I could think about was whether or not Emma was still looking at me.
I no longer felt her eyes on me, if it were even really possible to feel eyes on the back of one’s neck the way I imagined. But she’d have to still be watching me, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she want to?
A wave of a feeling washed over me, one that I had long since stopped experiencing, but that had once been such a constant companion to me that it was instantly recognizable. Abandonment, pure and simple.
And with it came anger. More anger. But this time not at her, more at myself. She owed me nothing – not anymore. There was nothing between us. There shouldn’t be. There probably shouldn’t have ever been. It was foolish to imagine that a gaze from a woman at the top of the stairs should mean anything more than that of a woman who I may, or perhaps may not, have known found me momentarily interesting. For all I knew, for all I really knew, Emma wasn’t even here at all, and the woman I’d met the other night had only told me I should come here as a cruel joke in recompense for my disappointing her in the heat of the moment.
Or so I told myself. I told myself all these things three or four times until the woman I had been speaking to with the blonde hair and the round, luscious breasts was as bored of me as I was of her.
And so I was left to my own devices at the ball. The point of being here was suddenly entirely lost to me. What would I even do? The point of these things was to find someone to dance with, and convince them to do more than dance, privately, later. Without that goal in mind, why even stay?
I looked around and saw the faces around me. Some of them were genuinely enjoying themselves, that much was true. But there were also many who had no interest in staying any longer, clearly, but were remaining anyway. What kept them here?
Reputation. This was all a parade of reputation, even masked. What a bore.
I made my rounds. Perhaps people not being able to recognize me would have an advantage; I could hear what anyone had to say about me, or about Emma, entirely unobserved. If they didn’t know it was me, then they wouldn’t hold back. I would hear the pure, unvarnished truth.
So I skulked around, trying to catch any gossip that was interesting, or related to me, or related to Emma. But no one would say precious anything. Instead, everyone just kept talking about the latest scandal with a duchess and her supposed infidelity. It was entirely too scandalous, apparently, for anyone to find interest in anything else.
And so I was bored. Again. Until an acquaintance who I didn’t know well enough to know who he was beneath his mask, but apparently knew me well enough to know who I was, came up to me.
“Henry!” he said, far too familiarly for my liking, “I’m surprised to see you down here!”
I grumbled, in a bad temper. Told him that I had thought the ball would be more fun than it was, and asked cynically if I would never learn. But his confused expression told me I’d got it wrong.
“What is it?” I asked, and he informed me he didn’t mean he was surprised to see me at the house itself, but rather that he was surprised I hadn’t found my way into the card game upstairs.
Whist! Finally, something in this night might be at least remotely worthwhile! If I couldn’t have an interesting time socially, I may as well have a decent time financially. I pried from the man what room he’d heard that cards were to be played in, which information he held hostage in exchange for the promise that the next time we played cards together I would go easy on him. It was easy to part with this promise having no idea who he was, and therefore knowing I would have no way of knowing when I was breaking it.
Things were looking up as I climbed the staircase. I only paused for a moment when my eyes involuntarily glanced at the spot where Emma had been standing – no, where the woman I had thought was Emma had been standing – but it was not enough to take the spring out of my step.
When I got to the door I thought there ought to be some kind of secret knock for such a clandestine little private game. But if there was one, I didn’t know it, so I just burst in and took a look at the table before
me. I’d get a lay of the land. I’d know what was going on, and who was winning and losing instantly, and then I’d…
I stopped. I stared. The cards were wrong. And the bets were strange. There was so much money out just lying on the table, with a few cards in the middle sitting face up, and the money piled in little piles in front of everyone and in the middle.
What was going on?
I looked up at the faces around the table to find some explanation, but there were no answers there, only Willy, and a few others of our friends – or acquaintances, or marks – the woman Willy was infatuated with, and—
Her.
Her mask was off, and it was her. It was definitely her. How could I have doubted? How could I have not felt her?
She looked different, but the same. There was a knowingness to her now. She seemed more confident, more certain in her countenance. But she still did her hair the same silly, easy, simple way. And the tips of her lips still bent up in a kind of mirthless grin when she was nervous. Her eyes still fluttered without her meaning them to when she was backed into a corner and thinking hard, the left still fluttering once more than the right.
And her eyes themselves … they were the same. What had I said to her, the night I asked her to marry me? I said I wanted to look into her eyes, and see them still the same when we were old, though the whole world and all of the rest of ourselves may change around us. I wanted to be looking into those eyes when they’d seen a whole lifetime of ours spent together. I wanted to see her eyes in my children, and full of joy looking at our grandchildren for the first time. I wanted to see those eyes in every morning of every day. I wanted to see nothing else quite so often as I wanted to see those eyes. Nothing in the world.
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