Grahame, Lucia (39 page)

Behind me there was nothing but silence.

Then I heard my husband move swiftly across the room.

From behind he wrapped his arms around me, bracing me.

"Oh, Fleur," he said.

Tears began to stream down my face. I was glad the room was dim.

Finally he said, "Are you sure? Has a doctor told you
that?"

I took a deep breath and tried to wipe my cheeks surreptitiously.

"I don't need an
expert
to tell me," I said.

"But you can't be certain," said my husband gently.
"Nor can I. It's not a chance I dare to take again."

Still with my back to him, I closed my eyes and let the weight of
his words settle on me. I felt as if I were being pushed into a coffin and my
husband was preparing to close the lid.

I wiped my cheeks again with my hand.

Finally I turned around.

"Please, Anthony," I said again. "I don't want to
be alone." It was so hard to keep my voice calm and level. "I understand
your feelings, and I respect them. But there are other ways." I paused
with embarrassment, then pressed onward. "Ways of avoiding the risk."

I couldn't read his face in the dim light.

"What do you want from me, Fleur?" he said at last. He
sounded as drained and hopeless as I felt.

"Can't we agree for one night to forget the injuries we have
done to each other?" I pleaded softly. "Can't we set aside all this
hatred and bitterness for at least an hour or two?"

I stopped to steady my voice, and then went on. "Can't we
embrace, just once, without each of us thinking only of how to extract our
pound of flesh?"

He shook his head. I could see his faint ironic smile.

"No pound of flesh? But in that case, tonight would not count
toward your ransom." He paused. "No matter how trying it may be for
you," he added.

"I understand that—I accept it."

His expression softened yet further. "It
would
make...
an interesting change," he said at last. "But do you really think
that you are capable of it?"

"Yes," I said. "I know I am. Are you?"

In lieu of a reply, he took my face in his hands and, bending his
head to mine, kissed my mouth very softly. I opened my lips to him, and the
kiss, still very slow and fragile, became a delicate adventure. When he had
claimed my mouth serenely, his halcyon lips began to move down my throat, his
hands over my breasts. I clung to his shoulders as the last of my strength
flowed out of me like a spent wave sliding back to merge with the sea. His
right hand slid under the satin at my hips; it caressed my buttocks, my belly,
and finally stole between my legs. He fingered me gently, opened me.

My breath quickened. A moan of yearning escaped me. I pressed my
lips to his cheek to muffle it, but the scent and texture of his skin, so warm,
with just the slightest, tantalizing trace of roughness, sharpened my longing,
as he continued to cajole my body into those sweet tremors.

Only his left arm supported me. He guided me back to the bed,
slipped the last of my clothing to the floor, and freed himself from his own.

When he was done, he lay down on his back and drew me to him. I
found his lips with mine. His mouth was hungry, but gentle. There was nothing
vengeful or cruel in his kisses; even now they still had the lingering
tenderness that reminded me of how much he had once believed he loved me. So
indolently sweet they were, so peacefully unhurried that, to my despair, tears
rose to my eyes again.

Fearing that they might spill onto his own dry cheeks, I lifted my
head, then began moving my lips downward along his smooth, warm chest, letting
them press against his flat belly before I moved lower still. He sighed. I took
him in my mouth; his body arched.

This was the act I had hinted at earlier; now, even as he gave
himself over to it, I wondered whether, once his own desires had been quenched,
mine would still be left to smolder.

But after only a moment or two, my husband slid out from beneath
me. I tried to turn toward him, but he was above me, preventing me.

I could not help thinking, even as I succumbed, that he must wish
to keep my face toward the pillows so as not to see it, to render me anonymous,
to forget that it was J, his unloving and unforgivable wife, whom he might, by
some slim, unfortunate twist of fate, be about to miraculously impregnate. At
any other time, I would have welcomed this obliteration of my identity. Yet
now, in the moment of my most complete surrender, it gave me no pleasure to
think that I might have been any one in that succession of black-haired
mistresses.

He pulled me up so that I was on my hands and knees.

Never had anyone done to me what he then proceeded to do.

At first I thought it was a mistake and moved my hips slightly to
correct him. But calmly, almost tenderly, he persisted, and when I realized his
intent, I felt a clutch of alarm and started to resist.

He made no effort to force me. While he waited for me to become
still, he leaned toward the bedside cabinet, reaching past me to open it. From
within he took a small, silver-mounted crystal flacon.

He uncapped it; the scent of laurel wafted through the air. He
began to massage me slowly. The light aroma of the oil, as fragrant as the
breezes blowing over a Mediterranean isle, gave me a pagan thrill. But when he
had eased me completely, again he began that slow violation. Only the slight,
sharp intimation of the pleasure I struggled against, which mingled
inextricably with my anguish, prevented me from rising up and tearing myself
away from him. But as the tantalizing, sweetly excruciating invasion continued,
I could not restrain a moan.

"Ah, have I hurt you?" he whispered. He started to pull
back. "Shall I stop?"

"Yes. No! I don't know!" I sobbed softly, trembling,
half longing to break free of him, half yearning to take him even more deeply.

He became very still then, and began to pet my tossing head, my
drenched cheeks, until a jarring ripple of pleasure melted me enough to allow
him to proceed.

And so it continued, his hands calming and quieting me, his body
scalding me as I relaxed enough to admit him further and further. Then his hands
came around my waist, one rising to my breasts, the other falling between my
thighs, stroking and caressing, until there was no pain at all, only heat
washing through me in large, luxuriant waves. I sank onto the bed as he
possessed me completely; my flesh was now utterly beyond my control. I was
mortified by the violence of my response. It seemed to go on forever. Then I
felt him go rigid with a final thrust, as he whispered my name,
my
name,
stealing the last of my restraint.

He slipped free of me and collapsed upon the coverlet. I kept my
face averted; I could hardly imagine what he must think of me now. But then he
reached over and drew his finger along my jaw, coaxing my face toward his until
I had to meet his gaze. I could not remember ever having seen in his eyes an
expression of such undisguised sadness. He rolled to his side and held me
close, cradling me in his arms. I surrendered to this, as well, and slept in
his loose, easy embrace.

I awoke around dawn. The room was cool, but I was still warm in
the curve of my husband's body. I remembered dimly how, after rising once to
open the windows as was his habit, he had drawn the bedclothes over us, only
barely breaking my slumber.

I gazed at his sleeping face, now heartbreakingly youthful and defenseless.

But how would those features arrange themselves when he awoke with
the night gone, and, with it, that brief and glorious truce I had sued for and
won?

We did not speak of that night again.

Never had my husband seemed more stern and unapproachable than he
did a few hours later, when he took me to the Gare du Nord and put me on a
train bound for Calais.

I was on my way back to England. Alone.

Although the truce had expired, my husband's next offensive was a
subtle one. In mid-June, after leaving me to wonder how he might be enjoying
himself apart from me, he summoned me again to London. His request for my
company had been occasioned by a desire to take me to the theater.

As we were about to enter his box at the Haymarket, he was greeted
by a fellow who cast a look at me and said with a laugh, "So you're back
again, Tony?"

My husband introduced us. The other immediately straightened his
back, took his hands from his pockets, and bowed to me with grave respect.

"What a pleasure it is finally to meet Lady Camwell," he
said. "I could not resist coming to see the adorable Miss Neilson once
again," he added to my husband. "But I see that cannot be
your
motive."

"Julia Neilson is pretty enough," agreed my husband, in
a way that would have made me feel rather slighted had I been the adorable
Julia. "But I thought that Fleur might enjoy the play."

"Well, perhaps you won't
enjoy
it," he murmured a
little later as we took our seats. "But I think you may profit from
it."

"You have seen it before?"

"In April, when it opened."

I wondered who had sat at his side then, and since he seemed to do
little that was not calculated to remind me of my sins, what humbling lessons
lay in wait for me.

I recognized the playwright's name. I had seen him once, not long
before my second marriage, when he had been the toast of Paris. Marguerite had
pointed him out to me in a café.

I was severely disappointed, however, once the curtain had risen
on A
Woman of No Importance.
It seemed to me that the play sorely lacked
the emotional depth my recollection of the playwright's admittedly vain but
kindly face had led me to hope for. It was wonderfully amusing—breathtaking in
its cleverness—but so frothy and insignificant, so deliberately brittle, that I
felt vaguely irritated every time it wrenched a smile from my lips.

Still, to my surprise, at the beginning of the Second Act, I was
struck with a pang, rather than a giggle, when Lady Stutfield spoke of how
women are always trying to escape from men: "Men are so very, very
heartless. They know their power and use it." And although I actually
laughed when Mrs. Allonby declared, "Nothing is so aggravating as
calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most
modern men," it was at the astuteness, and not the apparent absurdity, of
her perception.

It was not until the Fourth Act, however, that I began to feel
very uneasy. I had no reason now to wonder why my husband had selected this
play. For, although I was irreligious and detested the melodramatic Mrs.
Arbuthnot to boot, I felt thoroughly admonished when she explained why she
would rather endure disgrace and social ostracism than marry the father of her
son. "How could I swear to

love the man I loathe.... No: Marriage is a sacrament for those
who love each other."

My discomfort took yet a sharper edge when even the puritanical
moralist Hester—played by the ravishing Julia Neilson—called Mrs. Arbuthnot's
choice not to legitimize her son an honorable one and reminded us all that real
dishonor lies in marrying without love.

Although by this time I was moved and shaken by the tone the play
had assumed, I was not sorry when the final curtain fell.

My husband then decreed that we would have supper at Romano's, in
the Strand. Perhaps that noisy exuberance of sportsmen, Gaiety girls, army
officers, and theatrical managers all jammed together in the famous dining
room—so long and narrow that it had been nicknamed the Rifle Range—was not
quite the correct milieu for a well-bred gentleman's wife, but I didn't object.
I was thrilled at the chance to glimpse this livelier side of English life. But
after we made our way into the restaurant, and after my husband had
acknowledged a few greetings from the Rifle Range, we were led upstairs to a
private room, there to enjoy our supper in quiet and intimate splendor.

"Now tell me, did you enjoy the play?" my husband asked.

"As much as anyone can enjoy being tried and condemned,
however amusingly," I replied. "That
was
what you intended,
was it not?"

My husband shrugged. "Perhaps I merely wanted to see you
laugh. But if the shoe fits, of course..."

"Even so," I said, "I could not help but admire the
play. I take its deeper message to be a more generous one. Perhaps it can
remind us
both
of the dangers of any hardness of heart."

"Indeed?" said he indifferently. But I saw his color
rise.

"For example," I continued with a magnanimity which was,
alas, not unmingled with spite, "it suggests to me that perhaps I ought to
judge you less harshly for the vices which you concealed from me so well and
for so long."