The Indiscretion (23 page)

And that was that. A first-class compartment had been vacated for
them. As
Lydia
put her foot
on the first step, several hands reached out to her.

"I have it," she said, shoving back anyone who dared
help.

She only realized that she had alarmed people when behind her Rose
said, "She's not herself." She took
Lydia
's arm –
Lydia
the invalid
again, whose maid explained her behavior. "We're been out here so long …
so worried … never thought to see civilization again—"

"I
have
it,"
Lydia
said. She
shrugged her away, grabbed her limp, damp skirts in one hand, gripped the
handrail with the other, and heaved herself up. She climbed the four deep steps
and enjoyed the exertion of it.

Someone handed them soft, dry blankets, then the door to their
compartment latched shut, making a neat end to her first round of big, fat lies
to, so far, a hundred or more people.
Lydia
let out a huge
sigh as she plunked herself down opposite Rose and let her head fall back.

"You shouldn't have kept his hat," her maid said across
the space.

"I wanted it." She lifted her head and set the hat on
top of it. The hat was too big, but her unkempt hair kept it from sliding down
over her eyes. So close to her nose, it smelled exactly right. Sam. She lay her
head back and did what she'd seen him do: She tilted the hat forward until it
covered her eyes. And, oh, the scent of him now. It filled her lungs.

The train began to stoke up, steam whooshing, the first chug and
clank of iron wheels.

With the movement,
Lydia
felt her chest
constrict, then she caught back a sniff through her nose. Her eyes began to
ache, a feeling that said she might burst into tears. She would not cry.
I will not cry I won't.

She managed not to. But it cost her a tightness in her throat that
made her muscles there feel as if they'd split. Her chest became a knot down
the center of her breastbone that hurt all the way through her back into her
shoulder blades.

Oh, Sam. The little refrain, without any other further recounting
– oh, Sam, oh, Sam – kept running through her, like a song she couldn't drive
from her mind.
Oh, Sam.
As if he were
inside the hat, she saw him suddenly: Sam swimming toward her, her thinking, I
deserve this. Him. My pleasure. I deserve him. Oh, how she had longed for him.
She longed for him still.

But how wrong, her thinking. The world owed her nothing. She had
to play by its rules or suffer its consequences. If
London
society
discovered what she'd done, her future as she had always imagined it would
evaporate. She would lose her good name and the privileges and protections that
went with it: She would lose everything she had come to believe already
belonged to her.

I deserve this
. What
arrogance. What a mistake. No. More humbly, she prayed,
Oh, dear heaven, please protect me from what I deserve.

*

Only
when Sam heard the long whistle of a train did he pick up his pace to a canter.
On a horse that was first-rate, though in a saddle that felt strange, he rode
east. It was the direction that would bring him to civilization quickest on
horseback – he'd already lain eyes on what had to be cousin Meredith, but only
from the distance. Someone, a fancy fellow with another horse, was with her,
her brother or father, he imagined. They looked to be taking care of something
wrong with one of their mounts, a thrown shoe, a split hoof, hard to say, but
she didn't need Sam, and Sam didn't want to introduce himself or explain where
he didn't have to.

At his first opportunity, he'd wire this place called Bleycott and
arrange for the return of the animal under him. For now, though, his job was to
get himself to
London
.

As to Liddy, he could manage without her. He'd enjoyed her
gumption, her shrewdness, their rapport, certainly her body, and even her
temper at times. The past three and a half days were already rare enough – a
man couldn't expect so much good fortune to go on. No, they'd worn out the
fantasy of it. They'd gotten down to reality. It was over; it had been grand.

Adiós
, he thought.
As he rode across the moor, it seemed alive with harsh beauty. Not that it
mattered. He had to say good-bye to the
Dartmoor
, too.
Adiós. Adiós to the moor. Adiós, Miss Liddy
Brown
. The valediction echoed through him, as if through a hollow place, an
opening canyon of loneliness. Alone again. Isolated.

Mr. Wilderness. Mr. Lone Wolf. On the loose again. Roaming again.

*

An
hour later,
Lydia
and Rose
changed trains in
Plymouth
. The second
train would take them all the way to
London
. Once more, a
first-class compartment was reserved, which they managed to lock behind them
after only a minor skirmish with two persistent people, a reporter and
photographer.

The train got going fairly quickly, then so did she and Rose.
Lydia
told Rose
about her adventure with Sam out on the moor, or mostly she did. She recounted
with enthusiasm and in detail about crawling across a bog and roasting rabbits
and reading stories while sitting in fog so white she had to hold the book
close to see the words. In fact, she told Rose everything except for one little
part – the part about the kissing and swimming and, well … the lovemaking part.
And she was looking for an entry for that, feeling brave enough to test the
water, so to speak—

When Rose took over, giggling out her own story, the story of her
wedding night. It was sweet and dear.

"So afterward I say, 'I'm sorry I was so stupid about it,'
and Thomas says, 'I think it's beautiful, Rosie, that you were stupid about
it.' And he kisses me on the forehead. He just beams at me, miss. I felt pure
and glowing, I tell you." She laughed. "An old married woman can give
you some advice now: It's worth it."

Lydia
smiled,
pleased for Rose. "What is?"

"Holding on to yourself, you know, for the blissful night.
One day, it'll be so wonderful for you, Miss
Lydia
."

"What if I didn't wait till the blissful night?" Surely,
she could tell Rose. She could tell Rose anything.

"What do you mean?"

"Hypothetically. What if you and Thomas weren't married?
Would it be less wonderful?" She asked the question fondly, teasing a
little.

Her companion blinked. "Yes: It would be immoral."

Immoral?
Lydia
straightened
in her seat. For a second, sunlight blinked through the window, through a copse
of passing trees. Wheels clattered.

Rose said, "If you're not married, it's wrong. 'A great moral
failing,' Thomas calls it."

"And you think that too?"

The girl's eyes widened solemnly. "Yes, miss, I do." She
may as well have added, How can you question it? "It's a dreadful serious thing
between a man and a woman: It can end in a child."

Unless you do something to prevent it,
Lydia
thought. She
felt worldly. And suddenly, oh, so alone.

She looked out the window, at jolly old
England
rattling by.
Stony fields, a bit of grass, some black-faced sheep. Ah, Rose, she thought.
There was no doubt that Thomas was lucky to have her for his wife for a hundred
reasons – though Lydia did
not
think
that Rose's having or not having a maidenhead determined her overall worth as a
partner. Even though Sam had said the same thing. Still, she was glad for Rose
to have something that mattered so much to her. Her husband's good opinion
regarding her chastity was hers.

So why this ache?

Oh.
Lydia
grew subdued.

By the size of her disappointment, she realized, in listening to
Rose and all that went on in the best room at the
Angel
Inn
, she'd grown
hopeful that she herself could share what went on by the river and lying in the
heather all night. She'd wanted to sort her thoughts out with her friend, talk
about her experiences on the moor that seemed so … so amazing that not to share
them with Rose and have her be happy too was a kind of blow. But she couldn't.
Because Rose would not be happy.

She'd be appalled.

Immoral
. The word left
Lydia
breathless.
Yet she had no response to it. She said nothing further, only staring out the
train window the rest of the way, watching her own reflection waver, like a
ghost, over the passing countryside.

Goodness, what a day for judgments, and all at the hands of people
she liked who theoretically liked her. A liar. (She was one and hated it.) A
snob. (She hoped she wasn't.) Now immoral. (From Rose's perspective, it was
accurate: Her employer was an immoral woman – a label
Lydia
did not wear
comfortably.)

She nursed hurt feelings and puzzlement with herself. Who was she
that people could say these things of her? Not the same person who had gotten
lost on the moor four days ago.

Immoral? Did she feel immoral? No. She would do exactly as she'd
done with Sam again. In a lifetime, she'd never know another man like him.

No, she felt solitary, separate: distanced from others because of
secrets and judgments passed, some in anger, some in perfect sweetness without
even knowing.

*

Seven
hours later, Sam stepped off a different train down onto the platform at King's
Cross Station. His mind was full of business: He intended to clean himself up,
drop by the embassy to explain the debacle that was his existence (being vague
about where he'd been exactly, so as not to be paired with and possibly
compromise Liddy). He'd see if anyone there knew where to find his family – his
grandmother, aunts, uncle, half-brother, and cousins – who were likely worried
sick. He considered briefly tracking down Gwyn. He ought to. But in the end, it
seemed already misery enough to have to have to face once more the wrath and
disappointment of his own family – after which he intended to locate his bags
in
Dover
, buy a ticket
for the next crossing, and take himself home.

Full retreat. Nothing he could do. The world would always pull
Liddy in the direction of old money and good English breeding; best he traveled
as fast as he could in the other.
Adiós
,
good-bye,
adieu
.

Good thing he didn't love her, because he sensed that the price of
loving was something he didn't want to pay: a sense of deprivation in
proportion to the strength of a man's feelings. Grief. How stupid would
that
be, to fall in love with a woman in
four short days? Why, a man moron enough to do it might feel lost without her.

Nope, good thing. Sam's life fell right back into its old pattern
– a man who was anything but lost. Though he arrived in a city that was new to
him,
London
, the emotional
territory was absolutely familiar – the exact same place he had been in
seemingly forever. The same routine. The same petty triumphs. The same smug
self-assurances. The same dissatisfactions, gripes, and grievances.

He arrived the same as he'd left: still himself, wishing he could
get away from Sam Cody – proving a man could change professions, change women,
change continents, yet still not change anything significant in his life.

14

An
ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.

Sir
Henry Wotton, first printed attribution

in
Ecclesiasucus
by Schroppe, 1611

"'
S
am Cody is a good fellow and the smartest man for the job.' I'm
reading you this part, even though he didn't say to." Ian Patterson, the
United States Ambassador to
Britain
, looked up
over his glasses, his sallow face droll, then continued, "'You tell him this.
If he can make himself respectable enough to get his letter of credence to the
Queen – if it looks like he can get accredited by the British government – then
I'll stick my neck out for him. We have to have an interim ambassador. Under
the circumstances, you understand, Ian. And Sam is there, with more
understanding of this country's interests than any other person I can think of.
Moreover, an interim post only requires the cooperation of a senatorial
committee, which I can arrange, since
Hobart
names the
committee. I'd be going out on a limb here, but Sam could do it, I know. I see
no reason why he couldn't pack up his cowboy hat, smooth out his manners, put
on a
New York
tuxedo, and
heat the creamy-smooth Brits at their own game – even single and having jilted
a senator's daughter. Twice, the idiot.'"

Ian folded the letter in half neatly and tapped its edge once on
the surface of his desk, waiting. "It goes on," he said. "So
what do you think?"

Sam squirmed in his chair as he frowned into the drawn face of a
man making arrangements to vacate his post because his health was failing.
Three months ago, Ian had weighed fifty pounds more. He looked like a different
man from the one in Paris last winter, sitting here now behind a large mahogany
desk that dwarfed him. Surprising and sad. Sam had always liked Ian. He hated
to see him look so poorly.

Sam had come across the ocean thinking to work with Ian, not
replace him. He'd been appointed by the president of the United States to the
post of ambassador extraordinary to a canal treaty negotiation – giving him
negotiating power over Ian in that one very particular area, that of reopening
talks on an ocean-going link between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans via a
cut through Central America. It was an appointment that made great sense in
light of Sam's role in the Spanish-American War and the treaty that ended it in
Paris. Moreover, it was considered a great public advantage that a railroad man
such as Sam would support the improvement that a canal would mean for shipping
without a lot of fuss over what that improvement might do to shipping's
competition with rail. Add to this Sam Cody's heroic reputation, built of
tangential connection to Teddy Roosevelt's First Volunteer Cavalry, also known
as the Rough Riders, and President McKinley had thought he had a viable
candidate to launch talks on an old treaty that gave the British more rights
over an unbuilt canal than they deserved. Sam should have been confirmed by the
Senate in record time, his new career as a diplomat sealed.

It probably would have been if one senator, a Senator Pieters,
hadn't cabled a long diatribe against Sam in an abrupt change of sides.

Sam had crossed the Atlantic early, his confirmation in the Senate
all but assured, to marry the daughter of the senior senator from Illinois, the
honorable John Pieters. The bride had taken to the romantic notion that, since
she and her new husband were about to live in quaint, jolly old England, they
should have a quaint, jolly old wedding there.

It was all one to Sam, just so long as he got married somewhere.
One argument against his appointment had been that he'd be seen as too blunt
and freewheeling – straight from Texas – for the good English queen. His
supporters were afraid that on style alone, she might refuse him accreditation.
His marriage – something he'd been planning anyway – was supposed to make him
"respectable enough" for a queen known to tolerate more idiosyncrasy
in a family man than in a slow-talking cowboy on the loose as a bachelor.

The rest was history. Sam had returned to London six days ago. His
relatives turned out to be easy to find the second he opened his mouth. A
hackney driver told him that the Americans "whot talk loike you does, guy,
er et the Ritz." He stayed one night in the capital at the same hotel with
them, then headed for Dover. There he'd claimed his bags from the Hotel
Allegretto, returned to London, and booked the whole clan passage on the next
steamer home.

When he went to board the ship at the end of the week, though, Ian
and two more men from the State Department were waiting for him. They took his
ticket and marched him off to the embassy, where he currently sat.

"I can't believe you didn't even come by," Ian said.
"We were worried about you."

"I was going to. But then I read in the paper I hadn't been
confirmed, and it seemed, you know, more discreet to just go, less painful for
all concerned."

"For all but your friends."

"Yeah, well—" Sam never could understand this part: why
people supported him as a friend, let alone a negotiator for his country.
"Seems like I upset people more than help."

Ian laughed. "We like that you roust everyone from their
ruts. Sometimes that's just was people need: chased from their safe positions
like a flock of fussy birds up into the air till feathers are flying."

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty good at that, I guess."

"Better than pretty good. You know how to leave the right
spots open so – if I may stretch the metaphor – when the birds find new spots
on the field our position is improved."

Sam laughed and scratched his ear. "I appreciate your faith,
Ian."

"So you'll do it?"

"Nah. Sorry. I'm sort of hankering after Texas these days.
You must have a next in command. Who is it? That Winslow fellow? He'd be—"

"They'd run all over him. Heck, they've given me a hard time.
Sam, these cocky Brits need someone who isn't going to play their game at all.
You'd shake them up – then, before they could wedge themselves in again, you'd
have the terms of a new treaty roughed out." As if it was a great draw, he
smiled his thin-lipped smile and said, "Gwynevere Pieters is at the home
of the man who'd be your British counterpart. Parliament is out. Most MPs are
in the country, hunting grouse this time of year. Miss Pieters is among them,
trolling, so they say, for a new match, looking for a titled Englishman this
round. What do you say you go up and protect your interests there, too? See
her, Sam. See if things can't be patched up. Despite her father, Miss Pieters
is a lovely woman, truly beautiful and—"

"No thanks."

"You'd be feted royally. The Viscount Wendt puts on quite the
spread."

"I just can't see myself – who?" Sam frowned, squinting.
"Who did you say is the host?"

"Wendt. Jeremy Bedford-Browne, the Viscount Wendt. Big outdoors
fellow. He and a few of the more sporty members of Parliament stomp around his
country property this time of year, a lot of dogs, tweeds, rifles, and wellies.
It's Wendt at his most social – he avoids the season, doesn't like parties,
only sits in his seat at the House of Lords when there's a vote coming up that
he cares about. Mostly, he lobbies in the background. A very powerful fellow.
He's given us a hell of a time with this old treaty, holding us to the letter
while he's organized opposition to a new one like mortared bricks in a wall.
You could catch him now, though, in a relaxed atmosphere where he'd all but
have to be civil."

"Wendt?" Sam repeated. "This is the Wendt whose
daughter was in the newspaper last week?"

"I'm not sure. Why?" Frowning, Ian twisted his
dry-looking, colorless mouth. "Now, Sam, the very thing we don't want
here—"

"Lydia," he said. "That would be her name."

The ambassador thought a moment. "Now that you mention it,
yes. Wendt's daughter got herself lost out on the Dartmoor for a few days, oh,
maybe a week ago, though she survived brilliantly." He guffawed. "If
she's like her father, she's a tough old goat. I'm not surprised she survived
it. What's that saying you have? About the snake?"

"Ah." Sam laughed. "So tough if a rattlesnake bit
him—"

"Her, in this case."

Sam laughed harder. "Her. If a rattlesnake bit her, the snake
would die."

Ian smiled widely, a smile that somehow didn't meet his rheumy
eyes. "That's it." He tapped his gaunt fingers on the desk with
satisfaction. His nails were bluish. One of the other men on the way in had
murmured cancer, though Sam didn't ask; he didn't want Ian to have to explain.
Or maybe he didn't want to know. It was about the saddest thing he could think
of, a man like Ian being cut down early. "You'll do it?" the man
across from him asked.

Sam told himself it was an act of charity, sympathy, of
gratefulness. A thanks to God: There but for Your grace go I. "Sure. I'll
give it a whack. Why not?"

Except, the minute the words were out his mouth, it was Liddy he
thought of, not his colleague; and the thoughts he had of her were more of an
earthly than heavenly turn of mind.

Liddy. Liddy's smile, Liddy's skin. Liddy's body. He was going to
stand close to her again, see her again. It made him glad, he realized, to
think he'd get a chance to apologize. A man ought not to spout off to a woman
the way he had.

He laughed to himself. It looked like he was going to call on her
and her family after all. And, knowing Liddy, he'd likely get himself a good
smack across the shins for it. Why, he could hardly wait, now that he thought
about it.