Grahame, Lucia (25 page)

The following day was devoted to the acquisition of gloves and
parasols, hats and shoes.

None of this, of course, was undertaken in a spirit of affection
or generosity; my husband, however, clearly seemed to enjoy turning me out in a
style that at last satisfied his exacting standards.

That evening he took me to hear Alexander Mackenzie conduct the
London Philharmonic. I wore one of Madame Rullier's more restrained creations,
a superbly simple white dress trimmed with tiny pearls, and over it, a cloak of
rose-colored velvet. I barely knew what was played—only that I must sit
sedately beside my icy, unbending husband, under a sweeping deluge of music
that nearly drove me mad with an objectless longing.

When we returned to Grosvenor Square, Marie, the French lady's
maid my husband had engaged for me upon our marriage, was waiting for me. But
to my embarrassment, my husband, who had followed me into my bedroom, dismissed
her.

"Take off your dress," he said softly when she had left
us.

My heart began to hammer violently. I longed to be back under what
I now regarded as the protective eye of Madame Rullier, disrobing in those far
less dangerous surroundings.

"If you cannot bring yourself to do as I ask, I will do it
for you," said my husband, now in a harder voice, "but that would not
be how we agreed to conduct our relations, would it?"

This prompted me to act. My chest felt hot and tight, my fingers
huge and graceless, but finally the gown was off. I laid it carefully upon my
bed in the hope that its occupation of that terrain might deter other
activities from taking place there.

"Now go into the other room," my husband directed,
pointing toward a door I had hoped would never be opened.

"There is nothing that proclaims a woman's virtue quite so
depressingly as white underclothing," he observed once we had passed into
his bedroom and he had closed the door behind us. "It doesn't suit you at
all. I hope I never see it on you again."

"Well, you must, I think, if you insist upon holding me to
this wretched bargain, for I have nothing else," I told him angrily.

"Then
nothing
is what will have to take its place. So
you may as well remove all your prim little rags."

"Oh, what is your object!" I cried, almost beside
myself.

He stepped toward me and placed his forefinger lightly under my
chin, lifting it.

"You," he said, "are on the verge of obtaining
everything your cold heart desires. But before that day comes, I intend to have
some pleasure from you, for I have never had any yet."

I was not quite so heavily defended as usual: I wore only a white
corset, a long gored petticoat with a narrow ribbon of yellowing lace at the
hem, plain white stockings, and sturdy, clinging lisle drawers. I could hardly
fault my husband for regarding this get-up as uninspiring—that was precisely the
effect it was intended to achieve.

As I began unwillingly to dismantle the flimsy barricades, my
husband disappeared within his dressing room. In his absence, I examined my new
prison. How I wished my inspection would reveal some ancient priest's hole through
which I might escape. But, of course, the house was too new for that—less than
two centuries old—and nothing in the room was conducive to flight.

Every element had quite the opposite effect. Velvet curtains of
midnight blue hid the windows and shut out the world. More night-sky velvet
framed the great bed; these hangings had been drawn back to reveal a billowing
coverlet, also deep blue and filled no doubt with the finest eiderdown. There
were great soft pillows everywhere—massed at the head of the bed, clustered at
each end of the long sofa, propped against the striped-silk ottomans that
flanked the fire. Indeed, every object that met my eye issued a wordless
invitation to sink into idleness and sensuality.

Now my husband returned with what I recognized as the parcel
Hélène had shown him on the previous day. He placed it upon the bed, opened it
in a leisurely way, and, laying back the tissue paper, drew out its contents
one by one. These he arranged upon the blue ocean of the counterpane. The resplendent,
frothy masses of color, brilliant heaps of silk and satin and lace, made a
dazzling regatta.

He then removed his dress coat and took up his station in a gold
velvet armchair which stood hard by the bed. Beside his chair, a table with a
black marble top held a decanter of Madeira and a pair of wineglasses. My
husband leaned forward to pour some of the pale wine into one of them, but he
did not lift it to his mouth. Instead, he settled back into the chair, crossed
one leg over the other, and glanced at the palette of color spread across his
bed.

"Now we will see how some other things fit," he said.

I wondered whether the ingratiating Hélène had tried them on for
him the previous day, to persuade him of their charms—and hers. But no, it was
impossible. She had twice as much flesh on her lovely bones as I did.

Still I hesitated.

Surely my husband could see now how cruelly all this opulent
sensuousness must set off my dessicated self.

But he only gave a little lift of his chin, which instructed me,
as clearly as if he had spoken the order, to approach him. His face was
implacable.

As I stepped forward, I concentrated on obliterating every
sensation of shame and hatred. By the time I reached him, I felt nothing: I had
willed myself back into that state of somnolent detachment that had possessed
me in our marriage bed and upon which I knew I could depend to get me through
even this night.

My husband lifted his hand and idly ran the back of a fingernail
along the inside of my right wrist. I felt a soft, not unpleasant shiver.

"Try that first," he said, indicating a fragile, low-cut
nightdress of sheer black lace. With the composure of an automaton, I drew it
over my head. But as I did so the faint scent of fresh, crushed rose petals
wafted from the lace, so hauntingly seductive that I could not resist inhaling
it wistfully.

That, I suppose, was the beginning of my undoing.

The fragrance came like a faint siren's call to stir my sleeping
senses.

I fastened the red silk rosette buttons that secured the gown
across my breasts and down to my waist. The lace clung to me from shoulder to
hip; below, on the left side, the skirt fell in soft folds to the floor, while
on the right side, the hem was hiked and anchored just at the top of my leg by
another, larger rosette.

"Turn around slowly," directed my husband when I had
secured the last button.

"That fits you nicely," he commented. "Madame
Rullier was right. It does seem that I learned your body well—even with so few
opportunities, and all of them in the dark. No, don't say a word. Come
closer."

How can I describe my confusion as I obeyed? I moved toward him in
a faint mist of invisible roses that filled my head with wisps of ancient
dreams and slumberous longings. He took my hands and laid them on his
shoulders. I felt his muscles move beneath my palms, under his white waistcoat,
as he began to unfasten the first few little rosettes. The lace fell away. His
fingers grazed my breasts but did not linger there. I closed my eyes for a
moment; my contrived numbness began to have a tormenting pins-and-needles
quality as my husband's hands glided slowly down my lace-covered back to my
waist. His left hand slipped below the rosette at my right hip and came to rest
upon my skin.

"Oh, you're lovelier than any painting," he said softly,
leaning back to give me an appraising stare. "I've rarely seen such color
in your face."

It was true. I knew my cheeks were brighter now than they could
possibly have been made by the faint touch of carmine I had applied to them
earlier, at my husband's wish, before we had gone out.

"Well, I'm very pleased with that," remarked my husband
after a while. "You may take it off."

I roused myself and slipped out of the nightdress.

Next he directed me to put on a low-cut chemise of claret-colored
silk, likewise redolent of a summer garden, thickly edged with creamy lace and
matched with a pair of very short, loose drawers. Then he beckoned me to him
again with that wordless, imperative tilt of his chin. Already disarmed by the
languorous spell under which my senses threatened to pull me ever deeper, I
approached him.

"One must be rather particular about garments like
this," he told me, fingering the silken drawers like a connoisseur.
"Unless they are generously cut, they can sometimes be obstructive."

These could not be faulted in that respect. His hand met no
obstructing fabric as it plied its way slowly up the inside of my thigh and
came at last to the tender flesh it sought. He cupped me in his palm then and
curled his fingers slightly. At that small movement, I shuddered involuntarily.
He pressed the heel of his hand against me for one singeing instant, giving me
another, stronger jolt. I caught my breath in a sharp gasp.

"That will do," he said pleasantly, withdrawing his
hand. But my fickle nerves had already begun to play me false; they clamored
softly for me to pull his bold hand back and hold it there. Still they were, as
yet, very weak, and I was quick to suppress them.

"I think I might even enjoy seeing you in your demure little
patched gowns again," remarked my husband, "if they were merely
camouflage for this."

I remained motionless, still struggling to collect myself in the
aftermath of that brief and gentle assault. How had he succeeded in provoking
my flesh to betray me so blatantly?

It occurred to me that, since my will alone might prove woefully
inadequate to the challenges confronting it, perhaps a little wine would take
the edge from my nerves and dull my ears to their perfidious whispers. I moved
toward the little table and reached out to take the neglected glass my husband
had filled earlier. He took me gently by the wrist.

"No wine," he said softly. "I want all your senses
at their sharpest."

I might have resisted him easily. That numbing draught was within
my reach, and his fingers lay upon me so lightly that the smallest exertion
would have broken his grip. My pulse beat against his fingertips.

"I want you to feel everything," he said.

I took a step backward, and my wrist was my own again. The last
thing I wanted was to feel any more than I already did, but under his steady,
unsettling gaze, which held both a challenge and an appeal, that traitorous
heat rose within me once again.

I pulled my gaze away. The moment passed. When I looked at him
once again, I saw only a frosty glint of amusement on his face.

"I won't ask you to try on all those that are cut to the same
pattern," he said, referring to the chemise and drawers I wore, which were
replicated in a multitude of colors upon his bed. "But I
would
like
you to remove the chemise and let me see you in those green stays, if you don't
mind."

From among the silken pools of sapphire, topaz, amethyst, garnet,
coral, and lapis lazuli, I drew out the emerald stays and examined them with a
barely repressed quiver of dislike. They were thoroughly immodest, having been
made to cup only the underside of the breasts. But convinced that to balk at my
husband's wishes would simply turn the whole business into an interminable and
degrading exercise, I slipped out of the claret-colored chemise with a sigh.

The stays, however, with which I had been instructed to replace
it, laced up the back and gave me considerable trouble. To add to the
difficulty, some of my hair, having fallen from its diamond pins, was already
becoming entangled in the strings.

"What are you doing—it's useless to struggle with it,"
said my husband with a little laugh. "Just come here, for heaven's
sake.... Now turn round and pin up your hair as soon as I have gotten it
free."

I obeyed. While I restored my hair to its pins, he began to lace
me.

As he did so, my renegade memory wandered back to our early rides
together. My thoughts lingered in pleasant reminiscence on the graceful ease
with which my husband had saddled and bridled his horses—he always began by
whispering soft words to those high-strung creatures and by stroking them
gently. He had taught me to do the same with Andromeda and had shown me all his
ways of making certain that no piece of metal or leather tackle was so
carelessly fitted as to pinch or chafe her.

Now he was securing the laces at my back, testing them to make
sure he had left sufficient slack to permit me to breathe easily. Then his
hands came around the swell of my ribs to stroke me lightly. He was behind me:
That deft, almost soothing touch might have been anyone's. I felt my strength
ebb further, like a gentle, outgoing tide.

At first he confined his explorations to the territory encompassed
by the green satin. He ran his fingers up the whalebone ridges and downward
over the smooth fabric of the interstices; he circled my waist with his hands
and drew me into the embrasure of his thighs. His breath warmed my bare skin
but his hands never touched it. They were content with satin.