Grahame, Lucia (31 page)

"I am afraid I must. I have learned that it is never safe to
assume anything where you are concerned."

I bit my lip and began to saunter restlessly up and down before
the fire with one hand on my hip and the other arm crossed over my waist.

At last I tossed my head and said, "Well, tonight you may
assume anything you like."

He turned this over in his mind for a minute or two. Finally he
said, "Very well. In that case, I will assume you are anxious to be free
of me and eager to speed along the payment of your debt. Is that it?"

This being the least humiliating explanation for my presence in
his bedroom, I did not repudiate it.

"You've read my heart," I told him.

"Amazing! And here I did not even credit you with having
one."

I let that go.

"How I wish I could oblige you," he continued, with the
specious regret of a lord dismissing a mendicant. "But I am afraid that
now, as bad King Richard would have said, I am not in the vein."

My eyes fell to his trousers. I would have liked to reach out and
test my suspicion that he was lying, but of course I could never have done
anything quite so indecent.

He caught my glance and smiled.

"However, I can think of a way you
might
be able to
put
me in the vein," he offered suddenly.

"I am at your command," I replied, very cool and stiff.

That made him laugh. He reached out and pulled me to him and began
to run his hands boldly up and down my body.

"At my command," he repeated, sounding very pleased.
"So if I were to command you to go at once and leave me to my... less
troublesome pleasures"—he tilted his chin in the direction of the camera
stand—"you would depart as meekly as a mouse?"

He had me there. I knew I could not assent truthfully to
that
proposition.

"I don't see what pleasure they can give you tonight," I
said. My voice trembled slightly. His fingers were lazily at work now, fanning
the flames they had kindled earlier. "There's nothing here to
photograph."

"That's just the dilemma that was worrying me when you
arrived to present such an interesting solution."

I froze.

"No," I said.

"So much for being at my command," he responded with a
shrug and let me go.

And so, like a fool, I put my head inside the noose for the second
time.

We proceeded at a very leisurely pace, but eventually I had been
propped against nearly every object in his bed- room and had decorated nearly
every inch of sofa and bed, carpet and hearth, tables and chairs.

At intervals, he encouraged me to refresh myself with generous
libations from a claret jug.

My pulse was soon racing madly, but the cool-eyed would-be
recorder of these antics was exceedingly difficult to please. None of the ways
in which I disported myself, at first somewhat grudgingly but soon with far too
much zest, did he deem worthy to immortalize with his silver compounds.

Nevertheless, it was not long at all before his eyes began to
dance. Worse still, I was disgracing myself with barely muffled laughter.

At last he said, with a devilish gleam, "You know, I'm not so
pleased with that red thing after all. Take it off. I think I shall make this a
true nocturne in black and white."

And so, with scarcely any hesitation, I shed the bright tulle and
stood before him, laughing still, in nothing but the black stockings and gloves
and the black band at my throat. He pulled back the coverlet from his bed to
expose the glistening white pillows and sheets beneath and bade me lie down
upon them.

I did.

With a perfectionist's thoroughness, he arranged me fetchingly,
examined me carefully, adjusted my limbs a bit this way and that, at last
pronounced himself completely satisfied, and commanded me not to move.

Then he disappeared behind the camera and aimed the lens at me. I
sparkled recklessly back at him as I anticipated the joyous conclusion to this
night of folly and delight.

I heard the shutter close.

"You're so piquant," he whispered, emerging from beneath
the hood with tousled hair and an oddly tender expression upon his face.

But that earlier playfulness seemed to have fled. As he began to
remove his clothes, I saw the familiar aura of restraint and self-control fall
over him again like a veil. It only heightened my desire.

"Turn over," he said when he was done.

Silently I obeyed.

"Lift your hips."

I did; there was no posture I could pretend to be too proud to
assume for him now.

From behind me, on his knees, he entered me quickly, sharply,
without even the most perfunctory of preliminary caresses. I didn't need them.
I wanted to draw him into me so completely that we would be no longer two
bodies, but one. I wanted to absorb his cool, masterful dignity and make it my
own. I felt myself tighten with the longing to bring him yet closer.

He groaned softly and shuddered. The sound and the sensation made
me rock and writhe.

"Don't move," he whispered raggedly, and laid a cool
hand on my cheek.

It was all I could do to obey, but obey I did. The clock on the
mantelshelf ticked the minutes off as I bent against him, drowning in the
exquisite agonies of wild longing and impossible self-control.

He stroked my hair and told me what a lovely little trull I was. I
cried out then; my core exploded in one brief, violent spasm before I could
bring myself in check again.

I felt my husband's lips nuzzle the back of my neck.

When I awoke, the fire had died and the room was cold. Beneath the
covers, I moved closer to my husband's warm body. He stirred. I felt him harden
against me. I braced myself, with luxurious anticipation, to receive him again.
Instead he moved away.

"Are you still here?" he said with something like
annoyance and surprise. "You should be off."

"Be off?" I mumbled in sleepy confusion. "Do you
want me to go?"

"Please. You ought to have been in your own bed hours ago.
Now run along. And wash your face so that you won't shock Marie when she brings
your coffee."

Too stunned and wounded to protest, I slipped from the bed and
departed—yes, as meekly as a mouse.

When I had gained my bath chamber, I stared with disgust at the
sordid apparition in the glass. The rouge had streaked and faded; the kohl had
run from my eyes and smudged my cheeks.

Dear God, was
this
the image that my heartless husband had
captured only a few hours earlier?

A wave of horror and revulsion swept over me as I recalled, in
every hideous detail, what I had done and what I had permitted him to do.

I thought of the way he had dismissed me and I nearly banged my
head against the wall in a paroxysm of self-directed anger. How could I have
been such an idiot? How could I have let my body rule me so completely?

On the chance that my husband had not yet returned to

London, and not wishing to leave him with the impression that I
was hiding out in shame, I forced myself to appear at the breakfast table the
following morning. My face was scoured, my hair pulled up with ruthless
severity, and, should that alone not make a sufficiently strong statement, I
wore a gown nearly indistinguishable from the one I had preserved from Madame
Rullier's dustbin.

My husband greeted this unappetizing vision with a slight,
startled grimace, but rather than chastising me as coldly as I might have
expected, he merely remarked, "I see you've dragged out the hair shirt
again. Is it your penance for last night?"

He had a very self-satisfied glow. His little joke appeared to
have amused him hugely.

"I'm sorry if it displeases you," I said without a
milligram of regret. "I had supposed you would be on your way to London by
now and that I might dress as I please."

My husband raised an eyebrow.

"And what made you think I was going to London?" he
asked.

"You generally do," I pointed out, not adding the
obvious conclusion to my sentence:
Once you have had your way with me.

"I am beginning to find Charingworth more hospitable than it
once was," he remarked as he returned his attention to the orange he was
peeling with a small pearl-handled knife.

"By the way, if you can take any pleasure in an enemy's
sorrows, I have a piece of news for you," he suddenly announced in an
almost friendly tone. "Have you heard what has happened to that scoundrel
Poncet? Apparently his daughter, who was the light of his life, has had a falling
out with him. And she had an admirer, a musician, who is as poor as a church
mouse and whom her father thought entirely unsuitable. He had higher
aspirations for the girl. But she has gone to her musical lover and will have
nothing more to do with her father, who is beside himself, for she was all he
cared for: His sole ambition in life was to build her a fabulous dowry and buy
her a gilded match."

I could not help taking a pinch of satisfaction from this news; I
bore the girl no ill will and was pleased to think that in her own pursuit of
happiness she had deprived her father of his. But I did not appreciate being
reminded of Poncet, or of the paintings—not after the performance I had given
for my husband only a few hours ago, not after the casual way he had dismissed
me, as if I were nothing more than a girl he had bought for the night. And
because of this, I said, "So you have become such good friends with that
pander that he confides his troubles to you? Well, it doesn't surprise me. Like
attracts like."

My husband froze and flushed darkly.

After a very long time he lifted his head and fixed me with a cold
stare.

"You are mistaken," he said. "I merely chanced to
hear the story from an acquaintance of mine. But now that you have pointed it
out, perhaps I really ought to find more opportunities to do business with...
your marriage broker." He paused thoughtfully and then went on, looking at
the orange he was flaying and not at me. "After all, you made an
extraordinarily provocative picture last night. What a pity that it is only in
black and white and fails to depict the brilliance of your blushes. I wonder
what it would cost me to have it copied in oils. Perhaps if I show it to our
friend, he will recommend an artist. No doubt he'd welcome such a diversion
from his private troubles."

I blanched.

He lifted his head again and caught my anguished eyes with his own
remorseless ones.

"You must come with me when I go to Paris to see about
it," he said.

I closed my eyes and shuddered.

"Oh, surely it won't be as trying as all that," he said.
"Besides, think of the pleasure it will give me.
And
my kindred
spirit," he added scathingly.

I could not respond. I already felt completely corrupted by the
hungers, unhallowed by any glimmer of affection, which he had managed to awaken
in me. Now the shock of such deliberate malice, coming on the heels of those
recent intimacies which I had dropped my guard to partake in so
enthusiastically, only sharpened my sense of vulnerability and betrayal.

The rain poured down in sheets. The wind blasted it against the
leaded windowpanes and shook the branches of the ancient oak trees on the lawn
outside. The air within the huge, high-ceilinged rooms of Charingworth felt
dank and chill; the fires which had been lit provided only small comfort
against the drafts.

"You wouldn't do that," I said at last. "I don't
believe you are capable of such a thing."

He laughed.

"Oh, you have no idea what I'm capable of," he said.
"Haven't you learned that yet? So don't provoke me by pretending to be
coy, or you may discover there are worse things than having your picture
painted."

I wished more than ever that I had resisted the call to that
blinding, bewildering, and dangerous erotic sublimation. Now I understood—too
late—how completely he had disengaged his affections; not even my helpless
ardor had satisfied his lust for revenge. It had only whetted his curiosity to
discover how far he could make me stoop on a whim.