The Indiscretion (32 page)

On her way up,
Clive
stopped her.
"What is this? What's going on? There's some sort of intrigue, and I'm
being left out. You have to tell me."

"I will later," she promised.

Upstairs, Constance Bedford-Browne sat to the side of the desk, behind
which Lydia's father stood. Though position would have said he commanded the
room, there was no doubt that the viscountess, off to the side, in the shadows,
by dint of personality, was the room's mistress.

She began, "Your father tells me you were alone with Mr. Cody
on the moor."

"Yes."

"Does anyone else know? Besides Mr. Cody, that is." She
clicked her tongue, disapproval.

"Rose and Meredith. Meredith's mother and father, I
think."

Here parents exchanged looks, betrayed. Meredith's father was Lydia's
mother's brother. With disgust, the viscountess told her husband, "Lionel
should have said. How ridiculous to keep such a secret from us."

Jeremy Bedford-Browne nodded sagely as he pulled his desk chair
out and sat.

The viscountess tapped her beads together. She was rarely without
yards and yards of them looped round her neck. She had a mannerism of taking
two parallel strings, a knuckle between, and rocking them over her finger. It
made a little
tick-tick
if a room was
quiet. As this one was.
Tick-tick.
Tick-tick
. From the shadows, the viscountess stood. She produced a stack of
papers that had been on her lap, walking them to the desk. "I think you
should see these," she said.

Lydia came forward, querying her mother, then her father with a
glance.

"Here." Her mother offered the top page.

She took it.

"It's copies of agreements signed in Manila, Havana, and the
formal Treaty of Paris, all courtesy of my uncle." Frowning, she said,
"All mete out tough terms on Spain, but not only Spain. By omission, they
are very rough on the people of Cuba and the Philippines, both of whom thought
they would be self-governing. No one wins in these agreements but the United
States. They get everything."

Why did that surprise her mother? Lydia looked from one parent to
the other. "The U.S. won."

"The U.S. fought alongside the native people, made promises
to them. These treaties were negotiated by men who came in and gave no
concessions anywhere, very single-minded men."

"Ah, you are speaking of Mr. Cody. You're saying he's
unrelenting."

"He's impossible. They spirited him out of Paris last
December, because he became so belligerent the other side challenged him to a
duel. He suggested" – she smiled – "spears on bareback ponies, quite
sarcastic, this young man. The thing is, it seems he could have done it.
According to his grandmother, he lived with the Comanches for two years. His
father offered him in exchange, taking the chief's grandson, his idea of an
education. The rest here—" She glanced down at the pile, tapping them
once, then said, "The rest are: a brief account of Mr. Cody's background
from Whitehall, courtesy of your uncle, my brother, and notes from a talk I had
with Mr. Cody's grandmother in London."

The viscountess glanced at her husband, assuring Lydia they were a
force united, then said to her daughter, "I want you to know that, if he
is pressuring you in any way, because of the mere fluke of being alone with him
in compromising circumstances, well, you have a family that will fight
him—"

"No. I tried to tell Father. It's nothing like that—"

"Your father has noted his interest in you. And others notice
that the two of you argue a great deal."

He father clarified, "What we're saying is, you don't have to
marry someone you don't like, no matter what happened, Lydia."

"I don't?"

"No."

Well. What a relief. They wanted her to like her choice.
"About Boddington," she began. "I like him. I mean, he's very
decent. But I'm not sure I want to marry him."

Her parents looked at each other with shared confusion and
unhappiness. "All right," her father said.

"It's not all right!" her mother argued. "She has
to marry where her parents say." She added, glaring, "I did."

Jeremy Bedford-Browne stiffened in the way a man will brace
himself after a sharp blow has already come, a reflex after the fact. "And
you're unhappy with their choice?"

"No," his wife said quickly, as if caught unaware.
"I – I'm not." They stared at each other.

Her husband glanced at his daughter, then down. "Well, Lydia
doesn't have to."

The room grew quiet, not even the sound of aquamarine beads.

After several long seconds, her mother said into the lull,
"At least we have taken care of Mr. Cody. I think we should ask him to
leave. His attention to Lydia is entirely inappropriate."

"No, I have other things about which I need to speak to
him," her husband said. "I want him here. But I'll mention in passing
that Lydia is more or less spoken for. By the way," to his daughter,
"now would be an excellent time to spend some hours with Boddington."
He smiled kindly. "To make up your mind."

"Yes!" her mother seconded.

Yes! Lydia thought. Since she didn't have to marry him though she
didn't think it would take hours – it was best she tell him she wasn't going
to.

*

Wendt
was the hunter of all hunters. His chief joys were fox and grouse, though he
didn't mind the occasional hare or carted deer, and he raised pheasant by hand,
or his gamekeeper did, so, whenever the viscount wished, he could release the
birds to "shoot them over dogs." His stables were impressive. His
kennels were monumental. He had beagles, foxhounds, harriers, setters,
retrievers, and plain old mutts because occasionally the dogs got out and
crossbreed where they weren't supposed to, but he was so fond of them he never
culled a pup. He just kept them, scratched them, and fed them. And hired more
kennel huntsmen.

Coming back from a tour of Wendt's hunting haven, Sam and Wendt
started up the steps of the rear terrace. They paused, however, when, halfway
up, they could see that Boddington and Liddy were huddled on the far side
alone, having a heart-to-heart. Sam and Wendt stood shoulder to shoulder on the
step, watching for a second.

How attentive and kind Liddy was to the Englishman, the antithesis
of how she treated
him
, Sam thought.
She leaned toward ol' Boddie and touched his hand. He looked delighted for a
blink, then utterly downcast. Yep, Liddy could do that to a fellow. From the
heights to down a hole in a single second.

He and her father watched a moment, then Wendt took him by the
shoulder and turned
him
around.
"Best to leave them alone." He added as he led the way up through the
garden, "We expect her to marry Boddington" – as they marched along
the gravel, the viscount studied his crunching boots – "or someone very
much like him."

Lower and lower. Sam wanted to spit. He wanted to rail. Stuck here
when, between Liddy and her whole family, he was sure getting a lot of hints.
Hands off. Leave her alone. Under any other circumstances, heck, he'd be gone
by now.

*

Back
on the terrace, however, he'd left a very different situation from what he
thought, and Lydia wasn't too happy with it herself.

She'd taken Boddington's hand, looked him in the eye, and told him
she would always be his friend and never his wife. At which point, he'd flatly
denied he had still been considering the match.

"My mistake, then," she said. "I – ah – I just
wanted to be clear. In case."

They sat there for perhaps a full, awkward minute. Then, in a
murmur, more candidly, he admitted, "Actually, I did hope."

"Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. And I'm
sorry."

"I'm surprised," he added.

Yes, wouldn't everyone be? "You will have no trouble. You
will have your pick."

"Obviously not," he said, deadpan.

His eyes were a very dark brown, she realized. Something she'd
never noticed.

While puzzlingly, in her mind, she could see the color of Sam's.
Or colors. She knew the varying blues of his eyes according to light and mood.
Why? she wondered. They were so often angry, these eyes: lately, with her.
Edgy, melancholy. Why remember them?

Why think of him at all?

*

That
evening at dusk, Sam wandered back to the terrace, then down to the target
area, where he and Liddy had been shooting. Perhaps he was hoping to find her –
he'd seen her walk down earlier, another day of practice. She wasn't here now.
She wasn't anywhere. She'd disappeared, her parents, brother, friends, everyone
seeming to run interference. He didn't know where she was.

He found an arrow, though, its feathers bent. Feathers. He picked
it up. He remembered her hat, dyed beaver felt, so soft in his hand, its
plumage as delicate as lace, ostrich. He held her arrow out, a finger at each
end. It was light and well-balanced, smooth, perfect – even the broken feathers
of her arrow were beautiful to him. Peacock, he realized. Peacock. Ostrich.
Captive birds.

Ah, he remembered his dark swan of the moor.

At Castle Wiles, Liddy performed, she glided, she preened as she
was supposed to. But privately, out on the moor… He still had this image of
her, the plain dress, her hair wild and coming down in crazy corkscrews all
over the place – it was so neat in the net she wore now.

Where was she as she had been on the moor? Anywhere? Did she wake
in disarray in the morning? Did she ever escape captivity here, ever escape
what everyone expected of her, to be simply herself?

Ore did she only get to release arrows toward a straw target,
angrily zinging them through their short span of freedom?

20

Always
play fair, but especially with cheaters: They know what cards they dealt you.

A Texan in
Massachusetts

S
am and her father seemed to have developed a great deal to say to
each other. Their heads were bent together over late morning tea. They went
hunting after that, a whole group taking off after carted deer – using
Boddington's father's staghounds. It was a sport that never made much sense to
Lydia
, involving the
release of a stag from a cart, then chasing the fast, leaping thing for hours
all over the countryside, all so they could put him back in the cart again. Her
father had a great time with it, however, though the stag must surely have been
tired of it. This time, her father, with Sam's help, was the one to corner the
poor beast, ahead of all the others. She hadn't seen her father so happy in
months.

The next morning, he and Sam were both gone again, this time just
the two of them with her father's pack of harriers and two servants to help
manage the dogs: after hare. She could have told them that, with Sam, all they
needed was a hatful of rocks – and be sure to have him cook any you bag. They
didn't return till late in the day – though a package arrived for her in the
morning's post from a London address she didn't recognize. It included a note –
"Enjoy.
Box Canyon Shoot Out
is
the best," signed, "Sam." Books. Six Buffalo Bills and one Annie
Oakley novel, not a one of which had she read nor did Clive own. Lydia was
thrilled and spent the rest of the day upstairs reading: She had Rose bring
dinner to her. It was hare, prepared beautifully with some sort of berries –
not whortleberries, but almost as good.

*

That
following day, at afternoon tea, she finally saw Sam for the first time for any
duration since their archery match – he, her father, and several other men had
been driving grouse since dawn. The season had opened. They all looked
exhausted. Nonetheless, they made it to tea, and she made a point of sitting in
the chair nearest Sam, of being nice, watching herself. She would not say a
single word to give offense. She would be considerate, sensitive.

He, too, seemed cautious – and puzzled, even wary of her presence.
All of which bred a kind of distance between them. They couldn't behave and be
themselves, too; she wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. Oh, Sam.

The tea biscuits began to taste dry; they didn't sit well. The tea
smelled flat, stale.

"I received the books," she said as she stirred her tea.

"Books?"

"The American novels."

"Ah. I sent them before—" He stopped.

She looked at him. "Before what?"

"Before I realized."

"Realized what?"

He shrugged, stared at her a moment, sighed, then got up and left.

Lydia sat there, slowly sinking into misery.

She spent the rest of the day hoping against hope for a kind word
from him, which never came. What a fool: The expectation left her wretched. Oh,
what upheaval of emotion. She went upstairs and cried. Cried!

Why? So what if he'd called her a shrew the last time they'd
spoken at any length? She was one then. Now she wasn't. Didn't he notice? What
did he want? Her knickers, she thought. Well, that was too much. And everything
else was too little.

Later that afternoon, a seemingly brilliant notion, she remembered
she still had his hat. Yes, the perfect thing. Not too much, not too little. He
loved his hat. She would return it, a gift.

She went upstairs and dug out his Stetson from the moor. How light
and lovely it felt as she set it into her lap, onto her aqua satin skirt. She
ran her fingers along the felt brim. She straightened the beads on the band,
while the sunlit lace of her bedroom wavered its pattern over the black hat.
She lifted it by the crown and put her face into it, closing her eyes when she
discovered that the inside was filled with the smell of Sam's head, his hair.
She almost didn't want to part with it. Though she would. To please him.

Then she stymied herself. She couldn't just send it. She should
write a note. She took paper and pen, each from one of the many small
arabesqued drawers of her writing desk (Sam's dark, uncomplicated hat looking
as out of place atop the delicate secretaire as Sam himself would sitting on
it), and drafted a dozen notes. None was right. She finally came up with the
clever composition:
Here is your hat.
Liddy.

All wrong, of course. Again, too little. She riffled through crumpled
ones; they all seemed to say nothing or gush:
Here is your beautiful hat. I hate to give it up. It so reminds me of
you.
She felt caught between extremes. Which plunged her into doldrums
again.

She felt a stranger to herself. Oh, how could she have known, she
wondered, that her mind had these peculiar, dark places? Lightless moors,
uncharted, terrifying for their lack of visible landmark or familiarity, any
sign of boundary. She didn't understand herself. She wasn't like this.

Or, yes, she knew the feeling vaguely. It had nibbled at her once
or twice in her lifetime, like a little misbehaving thing, a pup, who insisted
on using an earlobe or toe to teethe. Only the pup had grown huge and
undisciplined. And ravenous. It had turned out to be, not a flop-eared old dog
after all, but a wolf, a wild-eyed hound that prowled the moor of her mind.
Where it now ate her alive: She lay in the dark belly of her misery, confused,
on edge.

What was wrong with her, that she felt like this? It wasn't Sam.
It must be her menses. That was it. It was here.

It wasn't. And she actually looked for it this time. In her
clothes, in her body. Nothing. Lydia went to her bed and lay down. There, she
put her hand to her breast. It was tender, a sure sign her flow was coming. It
was. Oh, goodness, was it late – nine days now.

Her breasts felt full. Fuller than usual.

She was different, it occurred to her. She slept a lot. Food
didn't taste the same. She often felt queasy. No, don't be silly—

She refused to think of the word, nor even the possibility.
Meanwhile, her mind paraded all the people before her who might enjoy her fall
from grace, if – well, if. Even those who wouldn't, her friends, wouldn't be
able to help. So she couldn't be. Besides, Sam had saved her from it. It wasn't
possible. That thing he did, it prevented it absolutely. It always worked.

It usually worked.

*

Sam
got the box that night. It was waiting for him on his bed. Puzzled, he opened
it, then leaned it toward the light. His hat. The one Liddy had taken over. He
tried to think of a good reason she'd send it back – and couldn't. Boy, was she
saying good riddance to every last bit of him from her life. He lifted his
dusty old Stetson from the box, and a note fell off its brim.
Here is your hat
. Yep, here it was. Have
it back. Good-bye. Seeing the hat suddenly made him feel so bad he had to put
it in the box again, hide it. She didn't want it.

She didn't want him.

*

The
next morning, Lydia arose to a sunny day, a high-scoring day. Rose was in gay spirits.
She brought a breakfast of toast and tea; it was good. Lydia ate it looking out
into the breezeless, beautiful morning, and all seemed well. Yes, she was
feeling much better. Bright as sunshine, she told herself.

She was on her way downstairs, dressed for shooting, when, with
about two moments' notice, she suddenly rushed back upstairs – she made it as
far as the hallway water closet, where she promptly heaved up her wonderful
breakfast along with the remnants of last night's dinner.

Her mouth full of acrid taste, Lydia blotted her wet chin, stared
into the porcelain toilet, and burst into tears again. With the door closed,
she sat down on the little stool by the door in the W.C. There, bent over into
her own lap, her face in her hands, she wept for half an hour.

It was the darkest, loneliest half hour of her twenty-four-year
existence. Her moor-wolf of misery shook her by the heels and swallowed her
whole.

*

Shortly
after, Lydia was summoned to her mother's rooms. Her worst fear regarding her
parents was coming to pass: that she should spend the rest of her life
endlessly called on the carpet, all for having been wicked for really only a
day. It didn't seem right. And they didn't even know the worst of it.

Her parents' apartments were on opposite ends of the house. Thus,
on the south side of the house, in her mother's sitting room, she found the
viscountess at her writing desk.

"Come in, dear."

Constance Bedford-Browne sat at a small black lacquer secretaire,
tapping a stack of papers on which she set a book. Her hand on it, she turned.
"Wallace told me. I'm sorry. I'd hoped the two of you would get on
together." Her mother shook her head, frowned, then said, "Don't look
so defensive, Lydia. I only wish to talk to you, mother to daughter. I'm worried
for you."

"Don't worry, Mother." It would have been the perfect
opportunity to say
I'm
pregnant.
Yet that seemed a little much.
Lydia hadn't said the words aloud to herself yet. No, she looked for a better
way…

Despite reassurance, her mother's face looked worried anyway. She
continued. "Your father told me you were down shooting rounds of arrows
with Mr. Cody. You enter a room, and he doesn't see anyone else. Most of the
time, he seems to be fuming angry. He reminds me of a man denied, who thinks
he's entitled, somehow—"

Lydia shook her head. "He knows he's not."

Her mother seemed surprised by her quick, certain response, then
made a nod, acceptance. She insisted still, "The two of you are connected
somehow."

"We, ah – we grew to know each other out on the moor."
It was a relief her parents knew at least this much, she realized. She
shrugged, remaining vague. "We have things to say to each other, things to
resolve." She hoped they did.

Her mother's expression remained thoughtful. She nodded again.
"All right." From her papers, she separated out a small, thin volume
bound in yellow cloth, offering it toward Lydia.
A Texan in Massachusetts
by Samuel Jeremiah Cody. "A
book," she said, offering it. "His grandmother gave it to me. He
wrote it when he was in school and the first months after when he worked in
Boston as a banker. He saw it published when he was twenty-one."

"A banker? How odd." Lydia took the book. "I can't
imagine Sam as a banker."

"Nor could anyone else. They fired him."

She laughed. Of course.

"He was fired from a total of—" Her mother looked down
at another of her slips, before saying, "fourteen jobs over the first
three years he was out of school."

Again, Lydia laughed, a small, more uncontrollable burst, which
made her mother glare anxiously in her direction. Her mother wanted to be sure
of Lydia's feelings for this intruder – or, more accurately, to be sure of her
feelings against him.

The viscountess continued, "He reorganized his father's ranch
in the meantime, which took several years to make money, but eventually did.
With the profit, he bought part interest in a small railroad. That made money.
It all seems to have snowballed from there. He was already rich when, two years
ago, a geyser of crude oil erupted on one corner of his land in Texas. It did a
lot of damage, but he seems even to have turned that around." She again
consulted the small paper sticking out from the rest. "I should have
thought so much petroleum was good for nothing but making a million bottles of
elixir or hair tonic. But, no, he seems to have sold the rights to drill for
it, for a sizable amount of money as well as for shares, to a company
called" – another paper – "Standard Oil."

She frowned, blinked, then told Lydia as if not quite believing
her own words, "According to this" – she lifted the last paper,
giving it a shake – "his net worth is in the millions." Frowning
deeper, she told her daughter, "He is a most puzzling person: both the
largest failure and grandest success I have ever heard of."

Her mother was unsettled. She wanted to despise Sam, dismiss him,
but somehow had backed herself into the inability to do so.

And none of it mattered to Lydia. It was all irrelevant. Without
realizing, she had decided weeks ago on a moor whom the father of her children
would be. Or child. Perhaps it would just be child. Sam was not the easiest
person to get to march in step with anyone else. There was some doubt they
should become lifelong mates, though that is what she wanted. A revelation.

"Do you love Father?" she asked suddenly.

"Of course."

"He believes you don't."

"I can't think why."

"Because you leave all the time. Mostly you live in London,
and he lives here."

"We don't have much in common. I don't like to hunt. He
doesn't like London society. That doesn't leave us much." She smiled.
"We have you and Clive, of course. We're both greatly interested in the
two of you and your welfare."

"Why did you marry Father?"