Black Silk (19 page)

The first two or three times, Submit managed to dispatch Graham Wessit without much fuss. He came to thank her for her help at Whitehall. “It was only my duty; no thanks required.” He came on his way home from London to see how she was getting along. “Fine. I am managing quite well.” He behaved, was polite, and almost lulled her into believing he was what he seemed, a slightly fancified gentleman with ideas respectfully different from her own, who was sorely put-upon by a history of very wild oats, rumor, and jealous gossip.

She came home one morning from the little village nearby, however, to find him at the inn much earlier than he had ever arrived before. She walked into the common room, removing her hat, and found him sitting at a far table with Mr. Hanlon, the innkeeper, drinking coffee and Irish whiskey.

The innkeeper had the good grace to scramble away, trying to minimize their early morning tippling by taking the bottle with him. But Graham Wessit wasn’t the least apologetic. He rose and began as if he could give whiskey, at ten in the morning, an historical perspective. “Mr. Hanlon has been explaining that this inn was first a tavern built in 1698.” He smiled. His words were clear. He seemed steady enough.

Submit looked at him across several tables, as she played with the pleats where her veil was tacked to her hat. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

He registered her abrupt tone and looked down at his cup, then back. “I needed to talk to you.”

“What about?”

He smiled quickly, the reflex of a man used to getting by on his looks. The smile dazzled. It was annoying to see this little trick performed so well. His perfect white teeth set off his dark, sharply planed face. “I was hoping we might go for a walk,” he said.

“I’m tired. I’ve just walked to the village and back.”

His expression was one of genuine disappointment, making her feel somehow needlessly mean. What was he doing here, without the flimsiest excuse? Despite herself, she noticed the dark shadows around his eyes, deeper than usual. Another trick, she supposed. This man, who led the most undemanding and restful of lives, had eyes that always looked as if he’d been up all night.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No.” The smile pulled tightly back. Inch-long slashes—extravagant dimples—cut into his cheeks. “I suppose not.”

“Fine. I’m sorry, I have things to do today.” She began toward the stairs.

“It wouldn’t take long.”

She paused to see him take out a watch, one of six or seven, from the pocket of a dark, nacreous-bronze vest. She frowned. He looked up from the open watch. “Ten-fifteen. You can kick me out at ten-thirty.”

She really had to discourage this. “I’m sorry—”

He suddenly unthreaded the watch from the buttonhole of his vest. Glancing up, he asked, “Which ones offend you most?”

“I’m not offended by your watches.” But he continued unlooping the chains, making her feel petty.

One at a time, he set each of his watches on the table. Submit scowled at this performance but didn’t look away. Then he began on his rings. All five came off, to lie in a heap like a pirate’s treasure in the middle of the linen tablecloth, a small, sparkling pile implying that she didn’t know how to see him beyond it.

He held out his bare hands. She couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or faintly ironic. “What else am I doing wrong?” He looked down at himself, then back up. “Honestly, I need a friend to talk to, and for the life of me I can’t think of anyone else who might understand.”

Submit felt a warmth creep into her cheeks she couldn’t control. All right, she would give him fifteen minutes. “If you’ll wait,” she conceded, “I’ll be right back down.”

He called to her, “Wear your hat.”

“What?” She looked down from the landing.

“Your straw hat with the red ribbon.” After a moment he added, “To protect you from the sun.”

To protect her from the sun, indeed. She pointedly bypassed the hat upstairs in her room, muttering to herself. Whiskey at ten in the morning. Never mind the watches and rings. Dragging her to London to save him from hanging. Thanking her by lending William his flat. Then showing up repeatedly, as if nothing were wrong, calling her his friend. What exactly did he expect?

She was more irritated still when Graham Wessit wasn’t in the eating common when she came back down. The innkeeper pointed through the entranceway to the other side of the building. “Went to check on his horse.”

She could hear a horse stomping and snorting far off as she passed through an empty parlor. The parlor, an addition built of stone, led through to the carriage quarters, all built of brick. The old inn was a rambling congeries of styles and materials from over two centuries of rebuilding and repair. The carriage quarters took up more than half the building, their predominance coming from the days before trains charted the popular routes, when travelers stopped in fine, private carriages drawn by six or eight horses. Submit entered the tack room. It was filled with dried-out bridles, halters, stirrups, and cross-ties; it smelled of animals, old leather, old sweat, old straw. She ducked un
der a curtain of straps that hung over a low beam. Just as she did, Graham Wessit came in from the opposite direction, through a wide brick arch. She backed into the straps. They jangled and flapped.

Graham Wessit too was caught off guard. On the straw-strewn cobbles, his shoes gritted to a stop. After a moment, he threw an arm, a casually pointed finger in the direction of the carriage house and stable behind. “A rabbit,” he said. “It got into the stall.”

She stared at him. “So what is it,” she asked finally, “that you wanted to talk about?”

He looked around. “Wouldn’t you rather go outside?”

“No.”

Frowning, he tapped his fingers for a moment on the only furnishing in the relatively bare room—a frayed saddle on a wood saddle rack. He considered her a moment, then capitulated, straddling the saddle rack and sitting on it. He brought one foot up to rest across the front of the saddle. Submit found herself staring at the sole of his boot, its dark, dirty-brown color contrasting sharply with the light cream of his pants. His trouser inseam pulled without making so much as a crease over his cocked hip. She looked up to his face.

He continued to study her. “Why,” he asked as he crossed his arms over his chest, “are you so inhospitable? I don’t deserve it.” He squinted, then suggested, “If you’re afraid I’ll try and throw you to the ground, I assure you I’d hardly be so stupid.” He made a wry smile. “At least, not twice.”

Submit moved a bridle out of her way. Its solidness under her hand felt suddenly reassuring. She hung on to it. “Is this what you wanted to talk about? Throwing me to the ground?”

“No.” He laughed in surprise—in almost self-rebuke. “No, with you I’m sure I won’t get into trouble there.”

She frowned, not entirely sure she was flattered by the re
mark. “So are you in trouble somewhere else?” She couldn’t resist adding, “In need of another alibi?”

“No. And I didn’t do anything last time. Not in London and not out in the field.” He angled his head, as if trying to decide whether to take offense or not. “Look, I don’t know what to say about all that. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t want you to have to come to London to defend me. I didn’t want to expose you to the sort of prying that, by the way, I have known all my life. But you’re perfectly safe now—”

“Am I?” She let her hands slide off the bridles and ties and put her fists on her waist. “Safely pinned here? So you can come calling whenever you like?”

“What?”

“If it weren’t for you, I might be home right now—”

“What are you talking about?”

She took a step closer. “William. On top of everything else, you gave him your flat. How could you? He wants Motmarche!”

He blinked, a little startled, but answered calmly enough. “I should imagine he does.”

She walked right up to him until her hoops pushed against the saddle rack. “It’s my home.”

“He was raised there.” He leaned involuntarily back.

Submit let out a breath. “Are you telling me you think he should have it?”

He paused. “I suppose I am.” He spoke much more evenly than she. “It’s his father’s house.”

Submit could hear the sound of her own voice, emotional, irrationally upset. “It’s
my
house, my home! I lived there for twelve years. Henry left it to me!”

“Henry did a lot of stupid things—one of which was, at the time of his death, to horribly slight his son. A son, I might add, who lived at Motmarche probably more years than you are old, who married and moved out to accommodate Henry and his new bride, and who in return was
generally insulted or sloughed off.” He looked at her sincerely. “I think it’s abominable. There weren’t even nominal compensations in the will. I don’t blame William for trying to salvage his pride.”

Submit couldn’t speak for several long seconds. All she could finally get out was William—William is an idiot.”

“Ah,” he said with a nod. “And idiots shouldn’t enjoy a father’s love.”

She turned away. Her heart was pumping madly in her chest. Her skin felt hot. She pushed her fingers back through the side of her hair as if a piece had come undone, but it was fine. For whatever reason, Graham Wessit had taken his cousin’s side. She didn’t need to talk to a man who listened seriously to what William Channing-Downes had to say.

She turned to leave, but something caught her skirts and pulled.

“Turn around,” the man behind her said in the soft, unequivocal way that one might speak to a misguided child.

Her skirts were pulled back, all the way up against her legs. She looked down and around. The hem of her dress lay draped over the flexed ankle of Graham Wessit’s boot, a foot off the ground. He’d put his foot under her dress and hooked it onto a hoop to hold her in place.

She gave her dress a jerk, but that snagged the fabric into something that caught more firmly.

“You’re going to rip it,” he said, bending over and down.

He unhooked the thin fabric from a small, sharp little spike—apparently Graham Wessit rode with a spur. As he rose back up, however, he kept hold of her dress. He settled forward to cross his arms and lean onto the head of the saddle, holding a fistful of black silk. He looked at her, at eye level now.

“William,” he said, “
is
an idiot, of course.” Submit gave a distrustful frown. “He is a silly, pompous, self-important
fool. And I know enough not to believe everything he says.” A little softer, he added, “I know, for instance, that you are otherwise than he paints you.” He sighed. “But I also know he probably deserves better than Henry saw fit to give him.”

Henry, their chief grievance with each other, materialized again.

“Henry knew I wouldn’t neglect William,” she countered. “He just didn’t want William to have access to too much all at once. You ought to give Henry more credit.”

“I give Henry credit.” He let go of her dress, brushing it down. “Credit for riling William into a tantrum. Credit for engineering my embarrassment—and yours—over the pictures. And credit for knowing everyone well enough to predict your homelessness right now.” He shook his head. “Do you honestly believe Henry didn’t realize how furious the will would make William?”

She could only frown down at the saddle rack, at Graham’s bare, ringless fingers—neat, long, almost courtly in repose—where they lay on the saddlebow’s frayed edge.

“It was Henry’s favorite game,” he continued. “Playing God. I even fancy he would like to have shown me his pretty, young wife. If he hadn’t been so damned worried I might like her a bit too much—”

Submit’s speechless confusion rose up in a kind of heat behind her eyes. She stared at him from beneath a blush so deep it seemed to come from her bones. He was inviting her into rebellion against Henry. And against herself.

Graham Wessit swung a leg off the back of the rack, then dusted off his pants. “William’s mother, I understand, was about sixteen when she gave birth. Henry would have been about thirty. Which brings me to another little thing I’ve been thinking about Henry. He had a rather embarrassing affinity for young girls.” He let his observation sink in before he went on to its inflammatory conclusion. “Which I suspect didn’t make him too comfortable with himself.” He
laughed. “And which resulted in one shallow, literal-minded son, who, I know for a fact, made Henry pull his hair out. The thought of Henry producing a son like William, and knowing daily what he had produced, has always been one of the things that has endeared William to me most.”

Submit found words. “You are a vindictive, irresponsible human being who makes unfounded accusations—”

“Are they?”

She turned and went briskly toward the door.

“Don’t go—” she heard him say, but she pushed aside the dangling equestrian paraphernalia. Straps rattled and hit her shoulders. She shoved angrily at them, making them slither and clamor and drop into her face. Abruptly, she felt a drag on her dress again. She turned to upbraid him soundly this time.

He was down on the floor on one knee, untangling her dress from a heavy tack hook that had been left on the ground.

“Don’t go,” he repeated. “None of this—it isn’t what I meant to say at all.” He got up, dusting his knee, not looking at her. “Not that it matters much now, but what I wanted to tell you was—” There seemed to be real distress in his voice. “What I wanted to say was, well, it sounds rather stupid now—” He paused, throwing her a strangely wretched look. “It died,” he announced suddenly.

“Died?” She frowned up at his inexplicably pained expression. “What are you talking about?”

“The littler one. At the hospital. I went last night to see how he was.” He grimaced a kind of puzzled, unsorted expression of distraction. “His nose was running. His breathing sounded sloggy, like shoes walking in mud. He had a little face, all wrinkles, like some wizened old man, with a tiny little mouth that he didn’t dare close—he couldn’t eat and breathe at the same time.” Graham drew a deep breath.
“Then, right as I was watching, he suddenly relaxed. At first I felt such relief, like watching someone put down a ridiculously heavy load. Then I realized what his lack of struggle meant. I started yelling for the doctors, calling for help—” He broke off.