The Indiscretion (33 page)

Her mother smiled politely, her usual smile. Then her gaze left
Lydia's and the smile grew almost sweet, fond. "He was gentle," she
said. "And he wrote the most beautiful letters."

"Does he write to you?"

"Not anymore." She shrugged, wistful. "They were
lovely. One summer, he wrote every single day. If I missed a letter one day, I
knew it was the post, not him. The next day the stray letter would catch up:
I'd get two."

"Do you write to him?"

Her mother looked at her, startled. "No."

"Did you then?"

"Sometimes." She smiled all at once, broadly. "I
send him telegrams now." As if defending with a list: "Lydia, I do
everything he needs. I had two children by him whom we continue to support
together. I am faithful, loyal. How can he doubt my love?" She looked at
the papers in her hand, then murmured almost to herself, "The telegrams
were all about Mr. Cody, of course. Nothing else." Softer still,
"Perhaps I don't love him. I can't remember."

Lydia looked down, and there was the book her mother had placed in
her hands. Standing there, she opened it, curious for the man who had written
it years ago.

She never got beyond the first page, however, for what she read
there made her throat tighten. She brought her hand to her mouth. "Oh,
no," she murmured.

She offered the page out, as if her mother might read it and
understand.

The viscountess's gaze dropped, read, then raised again. She gave
her daughter a quizzical look over the open book. She didn't understand at all,
of course.

The opening page read:
This
book is dedicated to my father, Joseph Jeremiah "Heck" Cody, whom I
love very much and admire more than any man I know.

*

Two
ideas from the moor haunted Lydia. One, she'd thought that she could not have
Sam and please her family, too: And she was right. And, two, she'd thought that
pleasing others didn't matter, that she could act against the wishes of her
family, the dictates of society, and simply live with the secret: And she was
wrong.

She needed the people who loved her to know her. She couldn't hide
what she was from them.

This was what she was thinking when Rose came into her room that evening.
Rose with her shoulders bent forward and her eyes puffy. An unhappy posture,
the face of a woman who'd been crying.

She brought Lydia's nightgown to her in her dressing room, then in
the bedroom beyond opened the valve of the gas lights and closed the window
curtains. The gas jets hissed softly. Lydia walked out into a bedroom that
glowed. The light, however, did nothing for Rose's mood. It only further
revealed her glumness.

"Is Thomas all right?" Lydia asked.

"Yes, miss."

"You?"

She glanced over. "I'm all right."

No, she wasn't. The girl's happy mein from this morning – from all
the days since her marriage – was gone. She looked forlorn.

"What's wrong?"

Rose came to the foot of the bed, then, as she did when they both
had time to talk, she and Lydia sat on the edge. She straightened the books on
the night stand into a neat stack as if they needed her attention, then said,
"I'm disappointed." She rolled her lips in, pressed them, then
explained further. "My monthly came. It was late, but it came. I'm not
pregnant." She caught back a little sniff.

Lydia shifted and moved up onto her knees to put her arm around
the girl. Rose leaned into her. "You wanted to be?"

"Yes. Oh, yes."

"I'm sorry. How sad, then." Lydia sat there for a few
seconds, holding her friend, patting her arm. "And how sad for me: I
am."

Rose arched around enough to look up at her. "You can't be.
You're not—" Her face grew horrified, her eyes wide. Her mouth made a
little O of alarm. "You didn't!"

"I did. On the moor. Mr. Cody was so—" She started to
smile.

With conviction, the girl said immediately, "Oh, that evil,
evil man!"

"No, no, not at all. He didn't think we should. I did. It's
entirely my own doing." Lydia did smile finally, the first she had over
the whole business. "Well, my half of it is entirely my half-doing."
She made a weak laugh. "My undoing." She wished to make it into a
joke, to have Rose laugh, too.

Her maid, though, bit her lip, stared, then looked down.
"Excuse me," she said. She stretched her legs toward the floor, straightening
her back, and slipped off the bed. She walked from the room.

Nothing. She said nothing. Not censure, not consolation. Nothing
at all.

Lydia waited for a few minutes, thinking Rose would come back,
trying to remain cheerful. When it became obvious that the girl wasn't
returning anytime soon, Lydia found herself staring at the lace counterpane,
poking her finger into its holes, poking at shadows, sitting alone.

Over the next several days, she sometimes caught Rose frowning
grimly in her direction. Sometimes it was as though the girl was simply
disappointed, very disappointed. Sometimes it seemed she was angry.

Rose kept the confidence, thank God, but hers and Lydia's
chattiness, the friendship itself, truncated. It was as if Lydia as a person
had disappeared off the map of her world. As if her mistress had done what she
herself had dared not do, no "decent" girl do, and consequently Lydia
and their relationship would suffer so that her sacrifice to stay decent might
mean something.

She chose an allegiance to an ideal over Lydia.

Rather like her mother would, when she found out, Lydia thought.
Perhaps her father, too. He certainly enjoyed Boddington's father's staghounds.
They might very possibly choose society's approval over her – certainly her mother
loved it well. It was this reason, perhaps, this feared echo, that made Rose's
abandonment so utterly heartbreaking.

That and its likelihood of being a predictor of what a long,
lonely road lay ahead.

21

Every
man's passions make him different, and the choke of them'll make him odd by
somebody's benchmark. We're all somebody's cross-threaded oddball.

A Texan in
Massachusetts

T
hat week, Sam saw Liddy exactly four times. Once on the terrace with
Boddington. Another time midweek, through an interior east-side window – he'd
looked up from a telegram he was composing to the secretary of state and
happened to see her crossing the terrace. She went down into the rose garden, a
pretty, slender young woman in dark violet with another of her little matching
hats, her bow over her shoulder, her quiver, arm protectors dangling in her
fingers, swinging as she walked. She was on the move. She practiced a lot, a
woman in love with the flight of an arrow.

He saw her again at tea – the day he received his hat – where it
was so unbearable to see her obliged to be nice to him, he had to get up and
leave. The fourth and last time was the morning after that. He was coming into
the house through the mud room from shooting all day with her father.

The area Wendt shot was moorland. Amazingly, the countryside had
burst out into bloom: heather – the north moors were apparently a little behind
the southern ones. To Wendt, the healthy abundance of it meant red grouse, bagloads,
which fed on the heath. The season had opened two days ago, the viscount and
his many arriving friends avid, out every day at the crack of dawn. To Sam,
seeing so much heather again – a little shorter, a little purpler – was
painful; it was heaven.

The northern moor was hillier than the southern one, not as rocky,
not as wild somehow. Or at least the portion of it over which Sam shot wasn't –
they did what was called "driving": Beaters sent the grouse up out of
the bushes toward the shooters who hid behind butts (more butts, the British
were crazy for the word). You fired at oncoming birds. It was a duck shoot, so
to speak – with short spans of time in between for retrievers to gather the
dead birds. The Yorkshire moor was reminiscent enough of the Dartmoor that Sam
was pensive through most of it, thinking of the daughter – Wendt had some of
her mannerisms and used a lot of her expressions. It was eerie. Family. They
were a piece.

"Plenty of bogs this time of year," the viscount said,
speaking of Yorkshire as they came into the house. "They feed all the
rivers on the moor like sponges, soaking up winter rains, then letting it go
all summer into rivers and pools."

Sam looked up, and Liddy was standing there. She and he stared at
each other.
Rivers and pools
. Their
eyes held. She opened her mouth as if she had something to say, then closed it,
glancing at her father, then him again, all the while looking so fidgety and
forlorn – yep, still here, Liddy – that he wanted to turn right around and go
back out. Her father clapped him on the back then – the worse Sam and the
daughter got on, the better he and the father seemed to – and shepherded him
inside.

And thus it went.

Though he saw little of Liddy it was as if there was a physical
connection between them. He wanted it. He guarded it fiercely. His, this
connection to her. It was a joy; it was a torture.

Nothing gave Sam more pleasure than his and Liddy's moments
together – so tenuous, in his mind, threaded like beads of dew onto a spider's
thread.
Us
, he wanted to whisper in
the mud room. Nothing harrowed him so much as that he might not be delicate
enough in his grasp of their connection, to weave it into something
substantial, something to last a lifetime. He had to have her help to do it. A
man and woman did it together. He himself was clumsy with emotion. He lacked
insight, sensitivity. Would she help? He wasn't sure what she wanted of him. He
felt exposed to speak of his feelings in honest terms, his feelings were so—

It was why they were called "tender" feelings, he
guessed. He felt vulnerable. Speaking of love was easy enough, if a man didn't
have it at the heart of him. If he did, though – well, it seemed to take more
bravery than he had to whisper the word to Liddy. Love. He was in love with
her, and she was mad at him.

She sent him his hat.

She doesn't want you
. Why say
anything? What was the point?

*

The
mud room was Thursday. From Thursday afternoon to Saturday, Sam didn't see
Liddy at all: and he'd learned to watch for her. The writing desk at the
east-side window had become the place from which he wrote all his
correspondence – his sentry post. But she didn't go down to the archery range,
not on Friday nor Saturday, not once, and both were good days, high-scoring
days. He couldn't think what she was doing with herself.

Then the viscountess's sister's uncle-in-law's boy – the British
aristocracy were as intermarried as the tiniest, far-off town in Texas – a
cellist, came from Derbyshire for what Sam thought was a concert. Wendt himself
was disgruntled, but his wife was in residence and kept "mucking up the
shooting season something awful with these damn cream teas and concert
cotillions."

When Sam walked into the upstairs music room that evening, though,
all the furniture was pulled back: It was no concert. Typical. He'd
misunderstood. He was forever singing off the wrong song sheet these days, so
distracted he'd had to ask Wendt to repeat himself – twice – when the viscount
had said he'd be willing to set up a meeting in London for September to put
some of the ideas they'd talked about on paper – the beginning of formally
drafting a new treaty – ideas they'd discussed between the booms of guns and
the barks of dogs.

In the music room, chairs lined the walls, their single file
broken with occasional small tables sporting little fringed lamps. A cello and
piano stood waiting in the corner. Dancing. Not Sam's favorite pastime. Though
he should probably stay: Among the people who drifted in were not just
neighbors and houseguests but newcomers. At least four members of Parliament,
if he wasn't mistaken, their families in tow, had arrived to partake of what
Wendt modestly called "the best grouse moor south of Scotland" – men
it would be helpful to woo to his terms.

About five minutes into talking to one of them, though, as the
cellist and pianist tuned up, who should walk in? None other, God help him,
than Gwynevere Pieters on the arm of Boddington, of all people. The two of them
took over a table, ol' Boddie looking smug enough to strut sitting down. For
one quick minute, Sam reconsidered going back to his room. Then he saw Liddy.
And didn't want to. Couldn't have anyway. He was riveted.

She glided into the room just as the music started, a long-necked
swan tonight: She wore a black plume in her hair. She was a sight for sore
eyes. That wild hair of hers was tamed back into a smooth, shining coil, only
hints of wayward ringlets where wisps escaped at her nape. Her dress fit low on
her shoulders, blue-black taffeta, a kind of gun-metal blue, a metallic sheen
to it. She sparkled – cut jet and dark blue sapphires, tiny ones set in
malachite at her throat and ears and hands. Her skin was like cream against the
dark, glittering colors. While her breasts—

Whoa, her breasts. Most of both of them was in view, and memory
didn't do them justice. He remembered their being round, more generous than
expected on such a slim girl: He didn't remember their being … plump, so full
they could take over the neckline of a dress. He wet his lips, staring,
recollecting way too well: Her nipples were dusky pink. Rosy. Little things, no
more than a pinch of flesh in his fingers, set on small areolae, little
geranium-pink circles no bigger than the bowl of a soupspoon on dove-white.

Oh, yeah, this was what he should be thinking of now. He looked
down at his feet. His boots needed a shine. When he looked up, he blinked,
stepped back: Liddy was headed in his direction, looking right at him. She was
going to tell him to leave again.
And
take your hat with you
.

Sam turned to the woman standing next to him, a sweet-faced thing
who was a little on the heavy side. He didn't know her. "Excuse me."
He smiled. "Would you like to dance?" She looked bewildered but
delighted, and off they went.

As they turned across the floor with half a dozen other couples,
Sam caught glimpses of Liddy. She stood at the side, watching him, stalled, a
look of dismay on her face. When the dance ended, he was way too close to her,
only three or four people between them. She raised her hand to get his
attention. She got past one person, called, "Sam, I need to talk to you. I
have something to say—"

Yeah, right. "Go home," he thought. He took hold of a
lady between them, and out he went again, spinning into a waltz. He knew he was
behaving badly. He should stop. Yet it was more than just not wanting to hear
how she'd like him to leave again. There was pride in him somewhere that was
wounded.

I'm defending myself. From attack, insisted a voice at the back of
his brain. Though attack from where was a little blurry. You've gone wild. He
could hear in his own mind that he was defensive, self-justifying – and hated
himself for it.

She'd rejected him, that's all. It happened every day to one man
or another. Hell, there sat Boddington. She'd rejected him, too, word had it.

Besides, Liddy was too skinny anyway. Her hands were bony. Her
eyes, her hair were brown, the most common color.

Yet still, whenever his eyes found her as he circled the room, he
could do nothing but stare. If only he didn't like so well bony hands and plain
brown eyes.

No, she wasn't pretty. Not from every angle. She wasn't
soft-spoken like a woman should be. In fact, she liked to contradict him – she
liked to contradict anyone, even men. Especially men. She thought she was so
smart, so special. She wasn't kind-hearted; she was soft-headed. Why, she had
compassion for … for everyone, damn it. She wasn't very selective or
discriminating.

Hell, she'd had the poor taste to cozy up to him: to sleep with
him. How discerning was that? You'd think Miss Prissy Brit could do better.

She ended up dancing with someone else, some kid maybe
twenty-four, twenty-five. Watching her spin backward in someone else's arms
made Sam feel awful. Oh, he recognized the feeling: jealous. And he knew his
own usual reaction – anger, rudeness. He kept trying to check it, stop it, but
it kept coming on.

And there was something else afoot. There were only about thirty
or so people in the room yet, but Boddington was up, moving through them.
People were looking at Sam and at Liddy. He realized that Boddington, Clive,
and others were aware he was running from her, or waltzing from her, that is,
while she was trying to make him stop, get his attention: the two of them
fussing, at it again, the joke of the group. Boy, isn't it funny how Sam and Liddy
don't get along?

At which point, as he was passing her on the dance floor, Clive
danced up – he and his partner were dancing fast, laughing, like two people
trying to outrun the music. Only it turned out they were trying to outrun
Liddy. When her brother drew up near her, he tapped her partner. The fellow
looked around toward him, and Clive offered his own partner to him. "Oh,
Eugenia!" he said, positively edified by the new arrangement. Clive took
Liddy's hand briefly, as if he intended to dance with her, but he only turned
her under his arm, smack into Sam, and stepped back. While someone else –
Boddington – snatched the hand of the lady Sam was dancing with. Sam's partner
danced away, leaving him in the middle of the floor: with Liddy, also partnerless,
the music and waltzing couples flowing around them.

"En garde,"
Clive said as
he danced off, chuckling.

"Very funny," Liddy called after him.

Sam let out a breath, a guttural,
ughh
. The stupid prank of it only made him feel more ornery – riled
for less reason than he could excuse, mad at himself for it, but nonetheless
fit to eat fire and spit smoke.

To him, she said, "People are being mischievous."

He twisted his mouth, looking down at her. Yeah, they were – when
he and Liddy were already rubbing each other the wrong way without trying; they
didn't need any help.

"Well, are you going to dance with me or just stand there and
glower?" she asked.

So close. He was half-afraid to touch her.

In the end, though, it seemed better to dance with her than stand
there and risk a conversation. Sam took her, his palm pressed to the taut, warm
silk at her back. He stepped forward, guiding her backward into Chopin. The C
sharp waltz. His grandmother played it.

He couldn't say he didn't like dancing with Liddy, his arms full
of everything female, everything he liked in a woman. Sure, dance with her.
This was what she was good at, gliding, looking pretty, appearing the perfect
English miss.

They said nothing for a full turn of the room, with Liddy glancing
up at him, then off, then up, seeming more agitated by the moment. Finally, as
they passed the wide doorway, she began again.

"I – I – I need to tell you—"

He looked down. She broke off. They frowned into each other's
faces as she pressed her lips. Then she turned her head, balking, like a filly
refusing a fence. She was scrambling somehow, a woman trying to recover
herself, unexplainably – disproportionately – discombobulated.