Decorum (22 page)

“Jesus H. Christ,” muttered McNee.

“Indeed,” said Shillingford. “I think we have just found Philippe Letourneau.”

C
HAPTER
27

Epiphany Sunday came and went before Francesca Lund admitted into her presence the repentant Edmund Tracey. He was quick enough to call following New Year’s Day and brought flowers as a sign of contrition, but was greeted with the news that Miss Lund had taken ill and was receiving no one. Francesca retreated to her bedroom and lay upon the chaise, her brain playing again and again the dreadful event and each disapproving look. Amid prayers for guidance she cried herself to numbness. That she didn’t feel her usual eagerness to forgive bothered her almost as much as Edmund’s flagrant disregard. Ten days passed before she could bring herself to send word that she would receive him.

She had been cool and dispassionate as she stood in the drawing room. Edmund kept his remarks upon his behavior brief, applied the requisite apology—omitting a promise to do better—received her forgiveness, and departed, all in the space of fifteen minutes. The episode fazed her so little that she wondered whether she should have offered him tea.

She took the dogs and went out. It was a pale, gray mid-afternoon. Snow had begun to fall in fat, quiet flakes. She made her way up Sixty-third Street and stopped when she came to Fifth Avenue. As Chalk and Coal investigated the shrubbery, she stood stupidly at the corner and looked up and down, deciding where best to enter Central Park. Her habit was to enter at the south and walk the park from end to end, but life had proved so contrary that she crossed the street and walked up Fifth Avenue and turned in at the Zoo.

The drab trees arched overhead, welcoming her into a peaceful, gray cathedral, whose lacy spray of branches vaulted skyward to hold up the light granite-gray ceiling. Beneath the colorless sky and the silent shower of white Francesca felt anonymous, invisible. As she glided along the path, she watched the world from a safe inner vantage point. The dogs’ hindquarters swayed, tails erect, noses dissecting the air. Figures moved in the gray light as if in a dream. The world was muffled but for the crunch of her boots and the patter of paws on the packed snow, but troubled thoughts cut through unbidden.

When she reached the Bridle Path, she decided to make the Lake her destination to watch the skaters. A weekday when children were in school and men were at work would likely bring only a few ladies. She might skate herself if she was so moved. She hugged the fur muff to her and quickened her pace. The snow fell heavier and began to accumulate on the shoulders of her black woolen coat and hat. At the Lake, the skaters were indeed few and mostly ladies, with two gentlemen hustling to sweep the surface clear. She found a satisfactory vantage point and unsnapped the leashes and let the dogs run.

A heavy heart fired warmth into her extremities. She recounted to herself how much she had relinquished in the past few days. She had nearly relinquished the idea of marriage when Edmund proposed. Her acceptance, she thought, was a sign of her recovery, a desire to get on with the business of life. Perhaps in theory this was true, but her choice seemed to force her to relinquish other notions she held dear, especially marrying for love.

She pondered, for the hundredth time, what she might relinquish in becoming Edmund’s wife. It wasn’t so much the quarrel over money or his behavior, but how marriage to Edmund would change her. She was beginning to like herself less because she was less like herself around Edmund. Curbing her actions and words to keep him in an agreeable mood was taking its toll. She was anxious before each meeting and relieved when he was gone. Her endless mental recitation of their disagreements and the minutiae of his behavior left her sleepless and weary.

As Francesca watched the skaters, out of the corner of her eye, she detected the approach of a man, heralded by the odor of cigar smoke. She turned to see a dark mass of overcoat and top hat walking toward her. The infernal O’Casey approached warily (
as well he should,
she thought) and stood beside her. The only saving grace was that with him she needn’t pretend. She felt herself flush nonetheless.

“Alone at last,” he began, and was stopped by the unpleasant look she gave him. “No,” he said, “that was in poor taste. I apologize.” She said nothing. “I heard you were ill. I’m sorry. I take this as a sign you’re feeling better.”

“Yes, thank you.” They watched together in silence.

“I’m sorry about New Year’s Day. I had no right to speak to you the way I did.”

“No, you had no right.” She whistled to the dogs to bring them back within the tether of her call. “But your apology is accepted.” She searched for something light to say. “I’m surprised to see you out for exercise. You must be feeling better yourself. You looked slightly worse for wear when I saw you last.”

“I am, thank you. As to the exercise, I’m an avid walker. Keeps the limbs and joints limber. Stimulates the brain, too, don’t you think?”

“Yes, for better or for worse.” Francesca’s thoughts strayed for a moment as she looked out over the scene before her. “Do you really enjoy a cigar? Wretched things. I don’t like the taste myself,” she said, not thinking.

“So you smoke cigars on the quiet?” he ventured cautiously.

She smiled in spite of herself. “No, I meant on a man’s lips.”

“I didn’t think you’d tasted enough lips to know,” retorted Connor easily, with a slight tone of mockery. She flushed and darted him a narrow look.

“Pipes are a much pleasanter form of tobacco smoking.”

“For kissing?” Worse and worse.

“Yes, for kissing,” she said, regaining her composure by degrees.

“I’ll have to take up a pipe.”

“It doesn’t suit your—personality.”

“Just what do you think would suit my ‘personality’?”

“I’m afraid I’m at a loss to say, since I’ve not had the privilege of encountering anyone quite like you before.”

“A deficit I shall endeavor to remedy.”

“Don’t trouble yourself.”

“ ’Tis no trouble,” he said, pausing until she looked at him. In spite of her calm exterior, her pulse rose and the winter atmosphere prickled at the rising warmth in her cheeks. She stood transfixed by his gaze, then came to herself as the mockery returned to his visage and he blatantly looked her up and down. “No trouble at all.”

“And is this how you endeavor to make yourself agreeable to ladies?”

“I don’t know any ladies—”

“I’m not surprised—”

“So it really doesn’t signify, now, does it? You see, I don’t believe in ladies, not really.”

“What do you mean, you ‘don’t believe in ladies’?”

“Exactly what I said. I don’t believe they exist. They think they do. They make men and even other women—especially other women—think they do. It’s always been my belief that the idea of ‘ladies’ only exists to sell fashions and jewelry and all other manner of bric-a-brac to clutter up a man’s life and keep him from smokin’ his favorite cigar.”

“So, you have no use for ladies.”

“Oh, I didn’t say I didn’t have a use for ’em.” He took a long draw on the cigar and exhaled in her direction.

She looked him in the face and then, with difficulty, looked him up and down. “And what might that be, Mr. O’Connor?”

“O’Casey, ma’am.” He smiled.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were a lady.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in them.”

“No, ma’am. I’m the great emancipator. In my eyes, all women are equal. A woman is neither high, nor low. She’s just a woman.”

“And not the equal of men?”

“None that I’ve encountered.”

“No woman that you’ve encountered or no man that you’ve encountered?”

“To clarify, no woman I’ve ever encountered has been the equal of any man that I’ve ever encountered.”

“Not equal, but better perhaps?” asked Francesca.

He paused and rested the hand that held the cigar on top of the hand that rested on the handle of the walking stick. “Perhaps.”

“Then she might be considered a lady?”

“No, never a lady, especially if she’s better than a man.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Of course it does.” He looked at her more squarely now, less mockery in his eye and in his tone. “How many women that you see in that blessed settlement of yours, scraping to hold a family together and put food in the mouths of their children, would you say were better than the men they cling to?”

“Most of them.”

“How many of them would society dub a ‘lady’ for her pains? And how many women at your society tea parties couldn’t begin to cope if the bottom dropped out of their lives and they were suddenly left to shift for themselves? How long do you think they’d last as ‘ladies’? How many of your society ladies would sooner forget where they came from—from their lowly forebears? How many would rather die than have to go back to earning an honest living? Can you see Maggie Jerome behind a plow? I think not. Give me a woman rather than a lady any day. Women can hold their own where ladies cannot—or dare not.”

“So you prefer a workhorse to a lady.”

“What I prefer is a woman. A woman who isn’t all lace and perfume and the latest gossip.”

“The latest gossip I can understand, but I thought most men preferred the lace and the perfume.”

“So they do. So do I, I confess. But most ‘ladies’ could no more survive in this world than the man in the moon.”

“You greatly underestimate these ladies,” said Francesca, her ire rising. “How many of them do you think are happily married, eh? How many? Is it not survival that makes them cling to loveless marriages? Is it not facing the world as it is? Is that so different from the world your so-called ‘women’ face? Is it not these ladies’ own talents and abilities that keep their households afloat when the folly of their men brings the family to the brink of ruin? Do you think that half the women who sell themselves into that sort of slavery for the sake of survival do so willingly and willingly throw themselves into the ‘protection’ of the lowest form of man?”

“Men are fools and blackguards, I’ll grant you that.”

“What makes you think I couldn’t take care of myself?”

“I think you could, as a matter of fact. I don’t think you’d be afraid of it. I think you’d work it out somehow—and manage to keep your self-respect. You’re not proud like the others. You’re stubborn as a mule and got your head in the clouds most of the time, but not proud. But you also forget that you have resources other than money that most women don’t have—not even your society women. You have an education—”

“So do other ladies.”

“You’re better informed than most. You’ve a certain practical knowledge of the way the world works, even from that blessed settlement, though you may lack certain experience. You know what work is and what it will yield and what that yield will pay for.”

“So do other ladies, and many have wider ‘experience,’ as you call it, than I do.”

“And what does your society call them behind their backs?”

“You’re a filthy hypocrite. You’d compromise the first society lady that would give you a second look.”

“I have done,” he said dryly.

She looked at him in disgust and was silent.

“What do they say about you, while we’re about it?” he asked.

This abrupt turn startled her and made her wary. “What do you mean?”

“What are they whispering behind their hands about ‘Poor Miss Lund’? So lovely. So sweet. So accomplished. They can’t understand why she hasn’t hooked herself a more worthy husband. Ah yes, acute melancholia. Isn’t that what the doctors said? Four perfectly good years lost, poor thing. If she only wouldn’t show her brains so much. All those books. She’ll frighten away all the good prospects. A man likes to know he’s smarter than his wife, now, doesn’t he? And Jesus, if she wouldn’t be always talking about God, for Christ’s sake. If she’d just give up the damn settlement and look more domestic-like. If she’d only just—conform.”

Francesca felt like smoldering fury. She looked him in the eye, barely containing herself. He looked so smug and self-satisfied. She could think of plenty of names to call him, but name-calling was not only childish, it would have no effect. Effect. Of course, effect. Her mind stepped back and watched herself and him. The memory of him sitting at the piano, fidgeting with the music, flashed into her mind. He
was
all bluff, she thought. He wanted to see how far he could push before he got a rise out of her. How stupid of her not to realize before. Another memory followed—the memory of Edmund’s jealousy that accused her of interest in Connor, an accusation she had dismissed for its absurdity, and yet . . . ? She relaxed as she had relaxed that night.

“Do you always swear and try your best to offend people?”

“Always.”

“No wonder you’re not married,” she said.

He chuckled at this and drew on the cigar and blew out the smoke.

“I suppose so,” he said. “You’re not a reformer, by any chance, are you, Miss Lund?”

She laughed. “So that’s what you’re afraid of? A vigorous overhaul for the good of your soul?”

“Let’s just say I’m not reform-minded.”

She laughed again. “I venture to suggest that you’d be hard pressed to find a woman who wouldn’t want to reform you, even if she vows to take you as you are.”

“Oh, I’m always eager to improve myself, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that improvement means reform.”

“How so?”