Bon Marche (54 page)

Dewey's wife sobbed.

“Write to me, dear Charles, if only to assure me that you are well. And happy. Perhaps some day…”

It was signed, “With fondest love, Mary Elizabeth.”

Mattie balled up the letter, hurling it toward the fireplace. It fell on the carpet, short of the flames.

“So, dearest Charles,” she said quietly, but with a biting-edge tone, “Charleston wasn't all racehorses.”

Dewey turned to her. “Mattie, believe me, nothing transpired between us. She was lonely, and she … perhaps suggested a possible—”

“Lonely because her husband wasn't there?”

“He was away in Washington.”

“You told me you had met him!” Her anger was complete.

“Yes, I did.” He sucked in a deep breath. “And that was a mistake.”

“It certainly was!” She was weeping openly now.

“Mattie, please let me explain.”

“The explanation, it seems to me, is abundantly clear in that.” She pointed to the letter on the floor. “‘The memory of what we had together is too bright to dismiss.'”

Charles was at a disadvantage. He had merely glanced at the letter. But now his wife was quoting it back to him. He picked up the crumpled paper and smoothed it out. The incriminating words made him ill. How could Mary Elizabeth have been so indiscreet?

“Mattie, there's a perfectly logical explanation…” He looked pleadingly at her. “Mrs. Cheves was a friend, nothing more. She helped me with the sale of the horses, and we had some time to talk together.”

Her sarcastic laugh stopped him. “Talk! Good Lord, Charles, you must think me stupid!”

“We talked together,” he went on, “and became close friends. I admit, Mattie, that I was attracted to her. But the reason for that attraction was that she was so much like you in appearance and in personality.”

“Oh, Charles,” she sighed, “don't bother to go on with your lies.”

“I speak the truth!” he shouted. “And, damn it, you'll listen to me!”

Mattie just shrugged. Getting to her feet, she went to the window, her back turned to him.

“I was attracted to her,” he repeated, “and she to me. And we discussed that attraction.” A pause. “There was an occasion, just before I left for home, that the opportunity for … uh … greater intimacy presented itself. But I stopped it there. I swear to you!”

She whirled on him. “And no embraces, no fondling, no kisses, I suppose!”

Dewey hung his head. “I kissed her, yes.”

“Just to console a lonely wife?” That sarcasm again.

“No. I kissed her because I wanted to kiss her, because I wanted more from her. But at the end, I realized that I didn't want … well, damn it, I didn't want anyone but you!”

There was a long silence as she looked at him.

“And what now, Charles?”

“Nothing now. Whatever it was, and it was fleeting, is over.”

“And I'm to accept your explanation?”

“Yes.”

“And dismiss what's in that letter?”

“Yes.”

“And go on loving you as before?”

“Yes.”

Mattie shook her head in doubt. “You ask a great deal, Charles.”

“I do, yes.”

“And this Mary Elizabeth, what of her?”

“I'll remember her fondly.”

“Charles Dewey, you are a lecherous old bastard!”

He grinned at her. “To that I'll confess.”

His wife started for the door. Charles didn't try to stop her. With her hand on the doorknob, she turned to him. “You'll answer her letter, I imagine.”

“No, I think not.”

“Answer it, Charles, and get it out of your system.” She thought for an instant. “Get it out of
our
system.”

“Yes, dear.”

“And stop being so damned agreeable!”

Mattie slammed the door behind her.

Dewey stood with the letter in his hand, reading it again. Slowly. Remembering.

Moving to the fireplace, he dropped the paper into the coals. The flames flared up and in them he saw the bright face of Mary Elizabeth. Warm and beautiful.

For a brief moment only.

It quickly turned to ashes.

IV

T
HE
first week in 1817 brought good news to Bon Marché. George Dewey wrote from London that he and Mary were returning to the United States. “We have had enough of London,” he said, “and are anxious to return home.”

“Mary needs a new forum for her social bragging,” Mattie suggested. “She has probably bored every Britisher to death by now.”

“Now, dear,” Charles said lightly, “let's be tolerant. Even Mary Harrison Dewey can get enough of high society.”

“I doubt it.”

“Father, I've made arrangements,” the letter continued, “to acquire a fine English stallion, Boaster. He's to be transported on the ship with us.” He gave the anticipated date of their arrival in New York. “Please make arrangements to have him brought to Bon Marché. I'm very high on him and he's to be my contribution to the ‘cause.' I hope that you and Franklin will find a place for me there.”

“Just think,” Dewey said, “George is coming home. The place will be a lot brighter with him around.”

“Maybe if you replied to him quickly,” his wife sniggered, “you could persuade him to leave Mary behind.”

“You are humorous at times.”

“Who's being humorous?”

Their sardonic laughter filled the room.

“We do have a
real
problem, though, Charles. Alma May is being very insistent about joining Mr. Ludlum's acting class.”

“I know. What do you think about it?”

“I have doubts, dear. But maybe if Louise is there to keep an eye on her—”

“The Princess tells me”—Charles grinned—“daily it seems, that the
finest people
in Nashville are enrolling in the acting program. Including young Sam Houston, I hear.”

“And Louise says that it appears to be a legitimate enterprise.”

Charles clapped his hands together. “Well, then, have we convinced each other?”

“I suspect we have. But I think we ought to send one of the maids with her each time. After all, we can't expect that Louise will be available to chaperone her at all times.”

“A good point.”

“Margaret might be a good choice.”

“A bit young for that responsibility, isn't she?”

“She's very level-headed, and Angelica has trained her well. Someone nearer Alma May's age may be more palatable to her. I don't want to smother her, after all.”

“Whatever you decide, dear.”

“Margaret it will be, then.” Mattie went to him, kissing him playfully. “Just as soon as you think you're ready for the Princess and her enthusiasm, let's tell her, shall we?”

A grimace. “Could you arrange to do that when I'm away somewhere?”

“Charles!”

“Just a thought.”

V

M
ARY
Dewey, as Mattie had feared, was holding forth at the dinner table at Bon Marché, inflicting a monologue of London society gossip on the entire Dewey family.

“The King is quite mad, you know, and no one sees him. And, for my tastes, the Prince Regent is little better. My dears, he's such a handsome devil, but the
scandals!
Women and gambling…”

George and Mary had returned to the plantation in mid-June, with Mary obviously pregnant. Of that, little was said; Mary seemed reluctant to talk about it. Mattie had to plan a large family dinner to welcome them, loathing the idea, knowing that it would serve as a platform for Mary's incessant, inane chatter, delivered now in an affected British accent.

“It's said, you know, that Prince George and Princess Caroline—she's such a light-headed snip!—don't really cohabitate. And that's not hard to believe, the Prince Regent can be an impossible bore. A scoundrel, really. Why I heard that—”

Mattie coughed, getting the attention of Louise, making signals with her eyes for her stepdaughter to move into the conversation.

“What you say is utterly fascinating,” Louise interjected, entirely at ease with the falsehood. “Mary, I think you ought to consider writing several articles on your experiences for the
Monitor.
Then we might all read about your adventures at our leisure.”

Her sister-in-law looked at her coldly. “I hardly imagine myself as a journalist, Louise. It seems such a … well, such a common calling.”

George, who had been lounging back, his eyes half closed, squinting through the amber whiskey in his glass, jumped in quickly: “What Mary means, Louise, is that—”

Mary cut him off. “I'm perfectly capable of making my own explanations, Georgie.”

Her husband shrugged.

But there was no further explanation to Louise, nor any hint of an apology. Mary was off on another story. “Paris is so much more gay than London.”

Mattie had had enough. “When's the baby due, George?”

“Well, let's see…” He laughed. “I'd estimate the foaling in just less than two months.”

“Georgie! Really! There are times when you can be so crude!” Mary looked around at the other Deweys. “It's talk like that that made me suggest”—she glared at her husband—“that we have the baby in Europe, where there's an appreciation of good taste and manners. Instead, Georgie insisted that we come back to Bon Marché—to this … well, this backward and uncouth region!”

A deep silence fell around the table.

After a few seocnds, Mary, smiling again, said, “I was speaking of Paris. It's so much more gay than London now that a Bourbon is back on the throne. Although I'll admit that this Louis—” She looked at George. “Oh, what is that number, Georgie? I can't ever seem to keep them straight.”

“Louis the Eighteenth,” he groaned.

“Yes, of course. It would be much easier if the French would consider different names for their kings, don't you think? Well, this Louis is rather old and quite obese.” She smirked. “But the convenient French morals are still intact. Louis has a mistress, a Madame du Cayla, and it's said she
amuses
him. Isn't that droll?”

All eyes were glazed over.

“Say, I just realized,” George interrupted once more, “that the Princess isn't here.”

Mattie leaped at the new conversational bait with the eagerness of a hungry fish.

“She's rehearsing this evening at the Nashville theater. That's something new since you've been gone, George. The Princess is quite excited about it. She's to play Juliet.”

Mary Dewey sniffed. “When one has lived in London for any length of time, one gets terribly sated on Shakespeare.”

VI

A
LMA
May sat entranced as Nathan Ludlum began the famous soliloquy.

“‘But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief, that thou her maid are far more fair than she.'”

Seated cross-legged on the stage, her eyes misty with emotion and locked on the handsome face of her Romeo, the Princess felt the desire in her. How dull those words had seemed when the tutor had intoned them at Bon Marché. And how alive now when spoken by a … lover!

“‘It is my lady; Oh, it is my love! Oh, that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses, I will answer it.'”

Alma May wondered how long she could go on this way—wanting him desperately and being denied what was so right.

“‘I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks: Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do intreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp, her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing and think it were not night.'”

There was a silence. To Nathan Ludlum, perhaps, but not to Alma May. The noise of her heartbeat roared in her ears.

“Oh, God!” she moaned softly.

Slowly getting to her feet, she walked to where the actor stood in the center of the stage, his head bowed as if drained of emotion. She rose to her tiptoes, kissing him on the cheek.

Nathan reached for her, but she backed off a step.

“Wait,” she whispered.

She turned to the chairs in front of the stage where the only audience was the black maid, Margaret.

“Maggie,” Alma May called out, “go to the livery now and get the carriage. We'll be going home presently.”

“But, Miss Alma, yer Momma sez Ah was to stay—”

“Maggie!”

Sullenly: “Yas, ma'am.” Her training took over; a slave didn't contradict a white person. She started for the exit.

“And Maggie—”

“Ma'am?”

“There's no need to rush, you know.”

“Yas, ma'am.”

They watched her go. And when she had disappeared through the door, they fell into each other's arms hungrily, kissing and groping, the pent-up emotion unleashed.

Nathan led Alma May to the corner of the stage, where the curtain had been pulled back, and they slowly sank to the floor, hidden by the folds of cloth.

“Darling, I love you so,” the Princess breathed. “How long can we go on like this?”

His hands answered her, roaming up under her skirt, searching. She didn't stop him. Not this time. It seemed only a moment. Perhaps a moment tinged with a kind of madness. Even a violent moment. But she didn't care. It was what she had wanted for so many weeks.

He spoke finally. “Princess, I
do
love you. You believe that, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Don't you think we ought to talk to your parents?”