Grahame, Lucia (13 page)

"There's nothing to tell, really. My mother died when I was
born. My father... went away." I swallowed painfully. "His name was
Hastings. That was my name, too. Caroline Hastings. But my grandmother didn't
like it. So she called me Fleur and gave me her last name."

Sir Anthony looked amused. "That was good of her," he
said, as if he were trying to keep fond laughter from spilling into his voice.
"I like it better."

I smiled back edgily.

With a sudden air of restless impatience, Sir Anthony stood up and
began to pace the carpet in his slow, measured way.

Finally he stopped and stood before me.

"Fleur," he said, "if you think your family
connections— or anything else—could possibly affect the way I feel about you,
then you still have no idea how much I love you."

"I just... don't want to embarrass you," I murmured
awkwardly.

He dropped to his knees and took one of my half-clenched hands in
his.

"How could you embarrass me?" he whispered. "I know
there are differences between us. I know that our opinions and attitudes and
the ways we are accustomed to thinking about things will sometimes clash. I
know your life has been very, very different from mine. But what do these
things matter? If we love each other, how can anything drive us apart?"

I stared back at him hopelessly. Never had I felt so cut off from
him by my secret; yet never had I felt such a rush of warm emotion for him. If
he had taken me in his arms at that moment, I might have told him everything.

But instead he released my hand, stood up again, and wandered to
the window. He lingered there for a moment Or two, staring down at the busy
street.

When at last he turned around, his face still wore that grave and
thoughtful expression. But now he seemed more serious than ever.

"Forgive me, Fleur," he said. "I never meant to
ride roughshod over your reservations. If you have doubts about the step we are
about to take, if you are uncertain about your love for me, or whether you
truly want this marriage, you have only to say so. There is no need for us to
rush into anything."

I stared back at him, mute.

"But if you love me as I love you, what is there to fear? All
that matters is what we feel for each other. Surely you know, better than
anyone, that love will always adapt and evolve and recreate itself to meet
every problem. With
that
star to guide us, how can we go wrong?"

A thin streak of bitterness shot through me. What did he know
about love? He had never been married. He had never been assailed by the demons
in whose face love is as helpless and impotent as a newborn child. Love hadn't
saved my daughter. Love hadn't saved Frederick.

But at the same time I knew he was promising me something
extraordinary. He was telling me that he was prepared to be flexible and
forgiving, that he knew there were ways in which we were certain to disappoint
each other and fall sadly short of each other's expectations, and that he
believed we could still go on loving despite them, that we could reinvent love
over and over to meet every new challenge, that it would grow and flourish, not
wither and die in the first winter frost.

He was assuring me that all my unspoken fears were groundless.

It was a beautiful illusion. How I longed to believe in it; if
only experience hadn't taught me that it was dangerous and false.

He was still standing against the window. The light behind him
made a halo of his fair hair.

"Are you ready to love me, Fleur?" he asked.

Perhaps all my sleepless nights and anxiety had made me slightly
delirious. All I knew was that for a moment he seemed to exude both calm
assurance and an almost hypnotic power.

He was waiting for my answer.

I knew that if I said no, that I was not ready for love, he would
not abandon me; he would, to use his own words, adapt.

But the force that seemed to radiate from him, almost against his
will, was irresistible.

How could I, impoverished, exhausted, and desperate, resist
everything that had combined to drive me into his arms?

"Yes," I said.

The wedding was carried off with a minimum of pomp and
circumstance. Not even Sir Anthony's mother or her second husband, Lord
Whitstone, came to Paris for the occasion. They excused themselves on the
grounds that Lady Whitstone was in poor health. When I remarked to Sir Anthony
that I hoped his mother's illness was not a serious one, his rather dry laugh
and terse reply suggested that he regarded neither her absence nor her illness
as cause for concern.

Marguerite Sorrel was my matron of honor; Lord Marsden, the best
man. Although Neville Marsden was a generation older than Sir Anthony, who was
barely two years my senior, it was plain to see how close was the bond between
them. Always kindly and urbane in his manner, and blessed with a wit that
generated an atmosphere of smiling conviviality among all the members of the
wedding party, Lord Marsden had that sublime talent of eliciting one's best
self.

But I noticed even his humor take on a slight edge when he made a
few casual asides to Sir Anthony about the absent Lady Whitstone. These gave me
an alarming picture of my new mother-in-law. I gathered from the one or two oblique
remarks not meant for my ears that she was cold, ruthlessly willful, and
outspoken to the point of rudeness. I was very glad that she had remarried and
that we would not be required to share Sir Anthony's home with her.

Théo Valory's tongue was not as suave as Lord Marsden's. The
hotheaded painter was susceptible to fits of surliness and had recently
exhibited an unfortunate tendency to envy and disparage his actress wife's
popular successes, which far outshone his own. Unfortunately, his defects of character
were never more pronounced than when he had the opportunity to rub shoulders
with the beau monde he detested and to imbibe unlimited quantities of good
wine.

I sympathized with Théo, whose abilities deserved more recognition
than he had yet received. He had all of Frederick's technical skill and more,
but he refused to abandon certain idiosyncrasies of style which would have
shocked Frederick's wealthy patrons had Théo allowed Frederick to show his
works to them. He used color in deliberately jolting ways; he violently and
intentionally distorted perspective; and he painted only scenes of common life,
completely lacking in grandeur. He prided himself in his refusal to pander to
anyone's taste and yet could not bear to risk rejection and ridicule by exposing
his work outside his own poverty-stricken but aesthetically impeccable coterie.

How he and Frederick used to fight! The case of Paul Gauguin—who
had virtually abandoned his wife and children to answer his muse—was a case in
point, Frederick declaring that any man who'd do such a thing was a soulless,
unfeeling cad and could never create great art.
Only
a man who could
make such a choice, retorted Théo, was capable of greatness!

I was enormously fond of Théo. Yet I so hated to see his
understandable dissatisfactions express themselves in hurtful ways that I had
half dreaded his presence at the wedding reception. My fears were realized when
one of the guests commented upon the enormous popularity of the play in which
Marguerite had recently appeared, a frivolous and delightful farce.
Marguerite's performance was its chief attraction, but far from enjoying her
triumph, Théo had lately begun to imply that the roles she took were proof of
her limitations. If she was serious about her art, he said, she would choose to
hone her mediocre abilities by performing in the more demanding realm of the
experimental, avant-garde, and generally insolvent little theaters he loved.

"Ah yes," said Théo in response to the guest's remark,
"La Sorrel has such a knack for playing to the indiscriminate taste of the
masses."

Marguerite was far too polite to counter this in public, but I saw
her lovely mouth tighten. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw, too, that Sir
Anthony had stiffened slightly. But when he spoke, his tone was mild.

"She is greatly admired, isn't she," he said, and then
continued with consummate politeness, "however, I am not quite so ready to
condemn the popular taste as 'indiscriminate' as you are, Monsieur Valory.
Surely you must agree that the ability to appeal to theater-goers of every
station is a sign of the greatest artistry. It requires enormous talent to
touch such a wide audience, to illuminate not only our differences but our
common hopes, desires, and fears. Your wife, Monsieur Valory, is brilliant."

Marguerite, although hardly unfamiliar with adulation, looked as
if she might burst into tears of gratitude. But Théo gave Sir Anthony an
insolent, disbelieving stare and then shifted his glance to me. I knew him well
enough to read the silent message in his eyes:
How could you have married
such an insufferable prig? You—who were wed to my dearest friend?
I could
imagine only too vividly how he would pillory the baronet later on at his local
brasserie, among his own circle, which until today had been mine as well.

Although I detested Théo's gratuitous jab at his wife and although
the views which Sir Anthony had expressed were precisely the ones I myself
held, I found, to my acute discomfort, now that Théo had been challenged, my
sympathies were entirely with the artist.

Lord Marsden had turned toward Théo.

"I am not acquainted with your work," he said, "but
Madame Br—my cousin Fleur, whose taste and judgment I respect unreservedly,
tells me that it is astonishing, that it startles the eye into new ways of seeing.
I have been hoping I might prevail upon you to let me see it for myself. When
may I visit your studio?"

Théo flushed. Frederick and I had often begged him to let us bring
Lord Marsden to his studio, and Théo had always refused, claiming that he was
loath to take advantage of his friend's success. But never had he been
approached so directly. I held my breath.

Sir Anthony and I spent the night in his suite at the opulent
Hotel Continental. I dared to hope that the web of expansive goodwill which
Lord Marsden had so artfully spun around the wedding party would cling for at
least a short while afterward, long enough to cocoon me through my wedding
night. But among the congratulatory cards that filled our room was a note to me
from Marcel Poncet telling me that he now found himself obliged to double the
price of his silence.

There went my hope of being able to manage my allowance cleverly
enough to avoid raising suspicion.

Until now Sir Anthony had refrained from ever seeking more than a
chaste kiss or an innocent embrace. I had been grateful for this, although at
the same time it had exacerbated my sense of guilt. Even passion could not
drive
him
to throw his principles to the winds. He had always treated me
like a lady.

Some day—perhaps only a month or two from now, it all depended
upon how rapidly Poncet's greed swelled and upon how skillfully I was able to
placate him—my husband would learn how wrong he had been. I could hardly bear
to think of it.

That miserable awareness kept me as lifeless and cold, when he
finally took me in his arms, as I had been when I'd received his kiss at the
end of the ceremony that locked us in matrimony. The fires which had blazed for
Frederick and had flickered dangerously for a moment in the forest of
Fontainebleau had gone out forever.

But I could tell from the way the gentle stranger who was now my
husband had begun to handle me that he was seeking to engage me fully in the
ancient dance of love.

I didn't want that. I didn't want to be drawn into anything I
might be unable to control. I was prepared only to submit passively to the restrained
power that I had sensed —or imagined—lay within him as he had stood at my
window and asked whether I was ready to give myself to him.

Still I knew that I must make an effort to demonstrate the love I
had professed to feel.

But I was at a complete loss as to how to do this. How
would
a
newly married, utterly respectable woman display her ardor? My experiences with
Frederick could hardly serve as a blueprint. He'd been a free spirit, and we
had not even been married the first time we'd let passion carry us away.

I thought the business might be easier if the room were dark, so I
asked my husband to put out the light. He assented without protest to this
request, although I sensed he was somewhat taken aback by it.

In the sheltering darkness, he was as tender and considerate as he
had always been.

He sat down upon the edge of the bed and drew me toward him. He
was touching me as carefully as if I had been the most fragile of blossoms.

I felt his hands, slowly stripping away my clothing piece by
piece, and then his lips on my skin. I shivered, neither with cold nor with
passion but with a wracking, fathomless sadness. I could not speak.