Judith Ivory (15 page)

“Why haven’t you mentioned this before?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t seem important.”

“It didn’t seem important? While I am going through the process of becoming a social pariah, a one-in-a-thousand, to tell me you had gone through the same thing?”

“It wasn’t the same thing. A divorce for an earl is—well—” He made a face. “The king and queen do not approve of such things.”

“You are telling me yours was worse?”

“Infinitely. And I don’t care to relive it. Christina, it didn’t seem important. It happened so long ago.”

“How long ago?”

“Nine years. A bit more.”

“A bit more,” she mimicked. “How much more?”

“Months. It will be ten years next May.”

“You keep track of it this carefully? ‘Ten years next May’? This unimportant event?”

He swung his legs off her and stood up. “Christina, it was a long time ago. And it is nothing now. Like all other women you are afraid of.”

“There are so many of them.” She sat up. “And you married one, Adrien. You married one.”

“When I was nineteen.”

“You can’t dismiss it like that—”

“Do you want to be held accountable for the marriage you made at nineteen? Should I be jealous of Richard?” He offered his hand to her. “Come on. I want to leave.”

A little meeker, she let him bring her to her feet. “Ex-wife,” she said softly.

“What?”

“It’s a new term I’m learning. You called her your wife, Adrien. When one is divorced, one becomes an ex-wife.”

“I don’t want to argue, Christina. Not when we have so few days left. By Thursday, I’ll be in Cornwall, and you—”

“Cornwall, indeed,” she muttered.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not going to Cornwall.”

“And whyever not?”

“Because you can’t be there and in Normandy, too.”

There was a pause. “Why Normandy?”

“Thomas said you were born there. I just assumed, when you went to France—”

“I’m not going to Normandy.”

“Then Paris.”

This time the hesitation was longer, the guilty space of a man reconnoitering. “And why do you think that?”

She didn’t look at him. “Little conferences in French. Open trips over there. Then suddenly you are going to disappear for—how long? weeks? months?” She glanced
up. “You have to be going to France. Have you forgotten you shot a horse out from under me? Other people may believe a sick grandfather and a few English friends who coincidentally all seem to speak French, but I have seen the little band of men all united in one place. I have heard the groups that come home in the middle of the night.” She pointed. “And there is a bloody map of France over there—”

He retrieved her pointing hand. “Christina—”

She pulled away. She had worked herself up into a genuine state of distress.

“Don’t stop me,” she continued. “I’m worried. I think you’re in some terrible trouble. Oh, Adrien—” She threw herself against him, her arms around his neck. Her sudden emotion surprised even her. She cared about him. In a way she had never cared for anyone. This new, intense emotion felt wonderful. And frightening. Her body had begun to tremble.

“Shh—” He stroked her hair and cooed to her.

“Don’t go,” she murmured. “You’re doing something dangerous, I can feel it. Don’t go.”

“But I have to go. And you have to stay.” There was a long pause. Then he barely whispered the words, “Will you lie for me, Christina?”

She looked up into his face. She could feel his breath, the moist intimacy of the few inches between them. He waited. “How?” she asked.

“Tell anyone who asks that you know I am in Cornwall.”

She made the smallest nod, and he pulled her head against his chest. She could no longer see his face. But she could hear the steady beat of his heart, and feel the gentle pressure of his hand as he played with the hair at the nape of her neck.

“Fine,” he said. “That is just fine.”

Within an hour they would be on the road for London. Only a very small staff was coming with them. Adrien’s valet. A cook. A maid for Christina. There were a housekeeper, two parlor maids, and a gardener already in residence at Adrien’s London home. These few would easily see to their needs. They would be in London only a day.

One day, however, should be sufficient, they thought. The trip was a formality. Christina’s divorce was settled in principle. It was simply a matter of signatures, of having the decree entered in fact.

That morning Adrien still had to see to some departing guests. Christina had to finish with her hair, and she had yet to eat breakfast. But they were moving leisurely toward these goals, expecting no complications, when a servant came and announced one.

“There is a gentleman to see you, Mrs. Pinn. A Mr. Winchell Bower.”

She shot Adrien a look; shock, regret. And fright. All her peace of mind, the strength and confidence she had felt she possessed these last weeks quivered inside her
as she rose from the table. Her father. The incarnation of her disobedience, of all the unfulfilled expectations of her life. If she could face him, then surely she could face anyone. She rose and followed the servant. Her father was waiting for her in the front library.

After she had answered his only letter, she and her father had drifted into a limbo of silence. In that letter she had told him, perhaps too forcefully, she thought now, that she intended to follow her own way with regard to her divorce and her life. She regretted some of the stiffness of that letter. But she knew, too, that it had been necessary in a way; it was all part of the clumsiness of trying to stand on one’s own feet after leaning so long on others. Like a child learning to walk. Unfortunately, she judged by his silence, her father had not been very forgiving of the lack of grace in these first steps.

It was with a great deal of trepidation that Christina approached the library.

She glanced at her bags, sitting alongside Adrien’s at the front door. Her stomach turned. Her father would have had to have come by them. She steeled herself. No matter. There sat the truth. Indestructible truth. She had better make it her ally, for it would always be there. She would never have the life her father had wanted for her.

She drew herself up as tall as she could and turned the knob of the library door.

“Hello, Papa.” She closed the door.

He turned. Winchell Bower was not a large man. Yet, when called upon to describe him, people frequently raised their hands, “like so,” to give the impression of great size and strength. He was impressive. Like a fighter, a wrestler who had bought the arena in which he had been mauled and groomed. He was a successful man in a world that had never precisely meant for him to be.

His daughter waited by the door. She waited for the
boom, the uproar. Grumpy, opinionated, he would burst out at her in a moment. He would be sure of what he wanted and where he thought she should be—home.

Yet, for once, Winchell Bower seemed to have nothing to say. He looked at her. Then his face rose to follow the height and length of the walls of books that surrounded them.

“Do you suppose he’s read all these?” he asked. He was listless, quiet; subdued. “I will need a map to find my way to the front gate again.” He made a gesture, a veering motion with his hand. “Someone had to meet me. The grounds….” Then, as if this explained, “the staff—” He raised his brow and turned with an extended finger, the counselor making a point—“the reception room.” He lowered his hand. This was not the point he wished to make at all.

He turned his back, began to run his hand along the spines of books. “I think—” He broke off. “I don’t know what I think, Christina. All the way here I thought I knew. I did a slapdash job of things in London just to make time in my schedule to come here and give you a piece of my mind. But now—It seems I can hardly find a solid piece of it for myself. I’ve been stewing all summer, you know. Angry with you. Cursing you.” There was a longish pause. “Worrying over you.” That was all he would admit. He stopped, cast his eyes around the room once more, shook his head. “This house is nothing like what I expected. It is beautiful. Civilized. Proper. I don’t know about the earl himself, but he keeps some very good company.”

Winchell Bower had apparently run into people in the front reception room. A judge. “Lawrence Sinclair is as bald as a goose.” He had never seen him without his wig and robe. And a member of the House of Lords. “I recognized him from a picture hanging in Merit Hall. I
cannot believe who comes here to play. You are in very august company, Christina.”

Her father remained puzzled, however, as to the earl himself. “Last September, he got flat-out drunk and had to be carried from the back room at Filby’s. I know there is an actress in London who has a child by him.” He looked over his shoulder to catch her reaction. “And I know he has a mean temper, like a spoiled child, if someone has a go at him. A few years ago he broke three ribs of Marmouth’s oldest son; just hauled off and bashed him. Not a very gentlemanly thing to do. Yet, I look around and see he is also this.” He held his hand out to the room. “Do you know he has all the works of Ronsard? And of du Bellay. Here,
Defense and Glorification of the French Language.
In English, then another copy in French.” He snorted. It was a familiar sound; disapproval, envy. “And look,” he said, “the earl is a poet.” He had his finger on the spine of a book. He took it down. “It’s his.” He handed it to her. Indeed. It was a collection of verse. Adrien was the author of a thin little book of French poetry, published in France in 1778.

“What does one make of such a man?” her father asked.

“I don’t know. He’s a dilettante in the sciences as well. He’s doing something with flowers, genetics.” And that wasn’t even half of it, she thought.

“Busy, isn’t he?”

“I suppose.”

His voice dropped. “Not so busy that you don’t see a good bit of him, I understand.”

“I see him.”

“You are his favorite companion, I am told.”

She didn’t answer this.

But the counselor let her know she had not got off scot-free: “I saw your bags were packed. Where are you going?”

“To London.”

His face made a sharp frown before he could call it back. “Without telling me? You were coming to London without a word?”

“I was going to call on you, Papa.”

“Call on me,” he murmured in reply. He studied her for a few moments more, then seemed to dismiss the matter. He walked over to replace the book. Over his shoulder, he called, “I have been made a judge, appointed to the King’s Bench.” He announced this casually, without joy.

“Oh, Papa, that’s marvelous. I’m so happy for you.” Christina came forward. But it was not a moment of closeness for them.

Her father was vague. “Yes.”

“When do you start?”

“Next month. I have to take a case to trial, then see who will cover some others pending. And I want to stay around long enough to push my own man for head of chambers.” He looked around at her, pathetic. “There are yet one or two privileges I can pass down if I play my cards right.”

This oblique reference seemed to be as close as they were going to get to the subjects of her barrenness and dissolving marriage. “Oh, Papa. I
am
sorry. From your point of view at least.” She bent her head. “I have been a bitter disappointment to you—”

She was going to go on, defend herself if she had to. But the sound of her father’s laughter—hollow, and with a trace of the warmth she had so often known—stopped her.

“You haven’t disappointed me,” he said. His hand made a brief, tentative touch down her arm. “I am just angry at a world that can’t see how valuable you are.” He kissed the top of her head. “But you are valuable to me. Remember that.”

The father-daughter tete-a-tete lasted only half an
hour. It ended with Winchell Bower, in unprecedented humility, advising his daughter she must do what she thought best. It was on this note that a servant summoned them into the front salon. Adrien was waiting for them.

He wore formal, official dress that she had yet to see on him. The left side of his coat was cluttered with the colored ribbons and decorations of an earl. He was dressed to impress, and his explanation for this impressed even further. He had had to see to the departure of the Princess Anne, niece of the king, cousin to the Prince of Wales. She had been staying there in the state rooms for the past week.

This was given offhandedly as the earl fussed over Christina’s father. She observed the two with a kind of removed and growing curiosity. Adrien Hunt displayed his charm. He laid it all out like the ribbons and medals positioned carefully down his chest. The beautiful manners. The astute consideration. His peculiar brand of smiles and remote cordiality. Christina couldn’t quite believe it—neither the scope nor the effect. With his deft and silky charm, Adrien Hunt took her father in. First, figuratively. Then, literally: He invited her father to share their coach to London.

“I would be delighted,” was the response.

In the coach she watched them together. Their affability. Their nodding respect as they tested each other, as they found common interests, concerns. They got along well. And would only get along better. What a surprise, she thought. But then, as she rocked along, she realized, Of course, they got along. It was no surprise. It was for the same reason she herself had been so helpless against Adrien Hunt: He was everything her father had ever taught her to want.

The divorce was formalized quickly in a judge’s chamber. Richard was present; snide, unhappy, and taciturn.
Christina didn’t blame him. She had gotten the better of him. Still, he seemed particularly gauche and ungracious—though perhaps it was sitting next to Adrien that made comparisons so unfavorable. Richard’s pale beauty looked anemic. His words, his manners seemed priggish one moment, tactless the next. He sat there in an aura of vain self-indulgence. Without character. Without direction. Without poise.

The divorce decree read as Christina wished it to read. She was divorced because her husband found her sterility reason enough to dissolve their marriage: She had surprised everyone, in the end, by deciding in favor of the truth. It was over.

Everyone stood. Adrien pulled back Christina’s chair as she rose. Then, as she turned, Richard took her arm.

There was pain, bitterness in his voice. “You never looked so well, so glowing,” he said, “married. Sin agrees with you.”

“Richard—”

“I must have made you the wrong offer—”

Adrien’s cane interceded with a thump across Richard’s chest. The two men’s eyes met. There was a moment of challenge. The judge cleared his throat. The two solicitors in the room each moved back a step.

Slowly, Richard let go of her arm. His mouth sneered as he spoke. “Fancy lord’s tart—”

Adrien’s cane snapped up. It struck Richard in the jaw. Christina could hear the awful sound of Richard’s teeth clicking shut from the impact.

Richard cursed softly as he put his hand to his mouth. His tongue was bleeding.

“You shouldn’t put your mouth where it can get in trouble,” Adrien told him. He looked at Christina. “Are you ready, then?” He turned his back disdainfully on the other man.

And Richard, like an idiot, rose to the bait. He grabbed
Adrien by his coat shoulders. From there, it all happened so quickly.

In one sweep, Adrien turned, brought his arms up, and knocked Richard’s hands out flailing. Then an elbow, a fist, and a knee, and Richard was on the floor.

Adrien put his foot on Richard’s heaving belly and bent over him. He hooked the gold ferrule of his cane into the other man’s cravat and lifted him several inches off the ground. Richard’s eyes bulged. His hands went to his throat, the taut fabric there.

“If you feel like a fight,” Adrien told him, “consider me always at your disposal. I would like nothing better than to stuff your head down your neck till, to sit, you must squat on your face.” He pulled the man an inch closer. “So long as you remember, the lady is off limits to you. Do you understand?”

Richard nodded.

“Good.” Adrien let the knotted fabric slip off the end of the cane. Richard’s head cracked on the floor.

Christina cringed as it did. For Richard, nothing could be worse than this. Adrien had leveled him. In every sense. In front of everyone. He deserved it perhaps. But Christina could not help but be a little appalled. The earl had—with perfect deliberation and thoroughness—put the baronet’s son in his place.

No one went to Richard or tried to help him as he climbed, staggered to his feet. He spoke thickly, “Sodding bastard…” Like a bullied schoolboy, with only profanity for his defense.

Adrien watched him, waiting for him to make any sign of further challenge.

When none seemed forthcoming, Adrien picked up his hat, his gloves from the desk. “I am much worse than that,” he said. He turned to look at Richard. “And, if you so much as come near her again, you’ll find out how menacing I can truly become.”

With a possessive caress at the small of her back, he guided Christina toward the door.

Richard called out to her. “Christina?”

She turned. He was bent over the desk, his face, his posture seething with anger and humiliation. “You won’t always be off limits, you know,” he said. He flicked a nervous glance at the man beside her. Christina grasped Adrien’s arm. “In six months, I—anyone—will be able to hold conversation”—the word was lent its lewder meaning—” with you. Anywhere. Any time they choose. He’s notorious, you know….”

Christina had to step directly into Adrien’s path. “It’s just talk,” she murmured. She herded Adrien out of the room.

As they came out into the street, he was fuming.

“It’s nothing,” she insisted. “
He’s
nothing.”

“He’s dangerous. He intends to harm you.”

“He doesn’t. I lived with him, don’t forget, for three years. He talks a nasty row, but he has never lifted a finger—”

“He lifted a finger toward me!”

“After you baited him!” She didn’t keep the disapproval out of her voice. “Rather horribly, I might add.”