City of Ash (32 page)

His smile cut my words dead. He stepped over to the bed and leaned down, whispering against my mouth, “He won’t find out.”

“When he sees you staring at me like some moonstruck calf—”

“He already sees that. Nothing’s changed.”

“I need to keep him from favoring his spoiled wife over me, and I can’t do that if I’m constantly thinking of you—”

“Will you be?” He smiled. “How encouraging.”

I slapped his chest in frustration. “You know what I mean!”

He backed away, that irritating smile still curving his lips as he picked up his shirt and shrugged into it. “You’re an actress, aren’t you? It should be nothing for you to fool a man like Langley, who’s so taken with his own importance he’s blind to all else.”

He was right, of course. Sebastian made it all seem so damn easy, and you know, I was suddenly afraid. I wished he would demand that I choose between him and Nathan so I had a reason to tell him to go to hell and leave me alone.

But instead he trapped me with that gray gaze, and said, “You never see Langley in the afternoons. Those hours between rehearsal and the performance … those belong to me. He’ll never know.”

And suddenly I was thinking about having him again while the sun blazed through my west-facing windows, both of us sweating, and I couldn’t even speak.

He finished buttoning his shirt and shoved on his boots, and then he grabbed his frock coat from the settee. And I couldn’t keep from saying, “And you probably want to keep this a secret from Mrs. Langley as well, don’t you?”

“She already suspects it.”

“She does?”

“She knows you’re my muse—what else should she think?”

“I thought muses were exalted beings. You know, like angels or something. Beyond common … fucking.”

He laughed. “Oh, I think the best ones are wrestling in the mud with man, so to speak. You know. Debauched.” He gave me a look that made me blush, and then he stepped over and kissed me, and I found myself leaning into him and wanting him, so he laughed when he pulled away. “Don’t go anywhere. I want to think of you waiting for me just like this.”

Then he picked up his satchel and slung the strap over his head, and he was gone, and I was still sitting naked on the bed and feeling as if something I’d wanted badly had just slipped through my fingers, and wasn’t that brilliant? If I felt this way after one night, how the hell would I feel after two? Sebastian DeWitt frightened me more than I wanted to admit, and that was the truth I needed to remember.

That was when I decided there wouldn’t be another night. I might be stupid once, but not twice. I would tell him that today, the moment rehearsal was over. I got out of bed. I went to the basin and poured lukewarm water into it and plunged my whole face in.

Geneva

I
dreamed that night about my lunch with Sebastian DeWitt. That lunch, which had lasted longer than an hour, moving into two, had been filled with laughter and talk and a little more wine than had been wise. It had made me forget Nathan’s betrayal for a while. Though there had been people in the restaurant I recognized, I’d made no attempt to quiet my laughter. I’d felt them watching us, and I knew that Sebastian DeWitt was right when he’d said there would be talk. But I no longer cared, not for Nathan’s sake or my own. When I’d arrived home to Nathan’s note that he wouldn’t be home for dinner, I was glad.

That next morning, I deliberately kept from thinking about Beatrice Wilkes and her relationships with both Sebastian DeWitt and my husband. But at least I had managed things so that I would not have to see her, and that was some consolation. I had no idea whether or not Nathan would be angry at what I’d done in removing her from
Penelope
, and I tried not to think of the consequences of that, nor about the fact that it looked increasingly as if, despite my hopes, neither Seattle nor my good behavior could return my marriage to what it had been.

I had just finished breakfast when Bonnie came in. “Pardon me, ma’am, but it’s Thursday.”

I glanced up at her blankly. “Yes?”

“Tonight is my night off, ma’am.”

“Yes, of course.”

She hovered, shoving her hands in the pockets of her apron. “Well, ma’am, Mr. Langley usually leaves me my weekly pay in the kitchen, and it ain’t there.”

“I’m certain he’ll provide it later.”

Hesitation, a slight flush. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I can’t wait. He won’t be back until after I’m gone, and I was to go to a dance tonight, and—”

I held up my hand to stop her. “There’s no need to tell me. Very well, I’ll get it for you.”

A quick curtsey, a smile of relief. “Thank you so much, ma’am.”

I rose with a sigh and made my way down the hall to Nathan’s study, where he kept the safe with money for the household accounts. The room smelled of him, of cigar smoke and the verbena of his custom-made shaving soap, and I felt a twinge of both anger and despair, which I pushed aside as I went to the cigar stand by one of the leather upholstered chairs at the fireplace. I flipped the latch, taking out the box of cigars, feeling along the bottom for the safe key.

There it was. I picked it up and put the cigars back. At the other end of the room was Nathan’s large mahogany desk, littered with papers. Behind it were bookcases, one full shelf of ledgers. The safe was there, below the ledgers, but Nathan’s chair was blocking it, and as I moved it, the key slipped from my hand, bouncing on the desk and falling into the partially opened, long, top drawer.

The drawer held Nathan’s letterhead, creamy white, his monogram in swirled black at the very top, envelopes, and the key was not immediately evident. It must have fallen beneath them. I pushed the stationery aside to get at it.

And I saw the newspaper article.

I would not have noted it except for two things: first, it was cut neatly from the paper, which would not have been so odd if not for the second thing, which was the fact that it was the society column from the
Post-Intelligencer
, and part of it had been underlined in ink, with a handwritten exclamation point scrawled in the margin beside.

I picked it up. The column was from two days ago, I saw, and the item that had been underlined said:

I stared at it in dismay. Nathan had said not a word of it to me, yet he’d found it noteworthy enough to cut it out. To underline it. To set an exclamation point beside it.

I puzzled over it for a moment, and set it back where I had found it, pulling a sheet of letterhead to half hide it as it had been before, and as I did so, I revealed another sheet, handwriting I recognized, and I paused, arrested by the sight of my father’s fancily looped
G. Gen—

I pushed it to reveal the rest.
Geneva
.

Frowning, I pulled the letter loose.

I could only stare at the letter, at my father’s handwriting.
I will not contest your decision to have her committed.… I have also immediately transferred Geneva’s accounts to your control.…
It was impossible. I could not be reading it correctly. But reading it again revealed no mistake, and my hands were trembling when I was done. They could not mean to do this. Not to me. I didn’t understand—this talk about the theater, about Sebastian DeWitt—hadn’t Nathan and I agreed to those things? Hadn’t he urged me to them?

Then, suddenly, it all fell into place. Nathan’s willingness to
put Sebastian DeWitt in my path. The quickness with which my husband had acquiesced to my acting on the Regal’s stage. The doctor’s visit for an inconsequential cough.

I glanced again at the society piece, underlined for my father’s benefit. I understood now, and saw how perfectly I’d played into their hands. How every single thing I’d done since I arrived in this town had done so.

An asylum. And I knew that once I was there, they would never let me out. Nathan would have control of my trust. Seattle society already loved him—I had seen that for myself, and the visit of Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Porter only confirmed it. They would fall over themselves in sympathy. The political career he wanted would be his for the taking. I would be out of the way, and my father would still love him.

I felt I would be sick. It was all I could do to put things back the way I’d found them, to close the drawer again, to put the key away, to go into the hallway. Bonnie was standing at the doorway to the parlor. She frowned when she saw me, saying, “Are you all right, ma’am?”

And I remembered why I’d been in the study to begin with. “I’m sorry, Bonnie,” I managed. “I could not find the key. You’ll have to wait for Mr. Langley after all.” And then I went past her and up the stairs, one at a time, feeling as if I moved in a daze, to my bedroom.

Once inside, I closed the door and leaned against it. I could not think; I could hardly move. I felt my father’s betrayal and my husband’s malice like a poison. And there was no denying my own stupidity. I’d forgotten how completely Nathan had fooled me once before. I had been too willing to ignore my suspicions, so determined to restore my marriage that I hadn’t remembered what a lie it had been to begin with. I thought of the night of the exhibition, how quickly Nathan had brought up Bloomfield Estates, as if he and my father had been considering it for some time, and I was afraid. How well I’d forgotten the choice I’d been given in Chicago, how foolish not to realize that they had never put it aside.

Dear God, what was I to do now?

The answer came to me in a surge of desperate panic.

Run
.

But where to? And how? I tried to remember: Nathan would need a second doctor to commit me without my consent, and I remembered his asking if Mr. Edwards had come to watch rehearsals, and I realized who Mr. Edwards must be. A second doctor, the one who would see me upon the stage and say I was mad, because what sane woman of my status would do such a thing? Oh, how well Nathan had planned it! But Edwards had not yet attended rehearsal, and so there was some time … probably not much. I would need to plan it well, to go where they could not find me, at least until I had time to decide what else to do. If they found me, there would be no escaping.

I forced myself to think logically. First, I must not raise suspicion; I must allow Nathan to believe his plan was proceeding as he meant it to. If he suspected I knew, he would move more quickly. Better to go about my days as I usually did. To gather my resources, to pack, to find a place to go.

I would need money. A steamer ticket out of this godforsaken town. And I could not be seen getting those things; I could leave no trace, no trail to follow. I needed help, a friend to procure the ticket, but what friends did I have but for—