Private Arrangements (15 page)

He opened the second door and left without another word.

And she could only watch as he disappeared from her view, from her life.

Chapter Seventeen

23 May 1893

H
e had not done too badly, considering the ungodly chemise she had sported. The jolt of lust had been explosive, the jolt of anger almost nonexistent.

I must be getting mellow with age,
Camden mused. How he used to fly into a righteous rage when she'd barge her way into his cramped apartment in Paris, then fling aside her long mantle to reveal bits of provocative nothing that would have made the Marquis de Sade drop his whip in stupefaction.

The insult. That she believed he'd let his penis control his mind, that if she could get him to bed, all would be forgiven. He had bleakly delighted in hauling her bodily out to the stair landing and slamming his door in her face. But such vicious enjoyment never lasted long. Over his own pounding heartbeat and harsh breathing, he'd strain to hear every lonely, echoing footstep of her descent.

He'd already be standing by the window in his dark, minuscule
salle de séjour
as she exited into the street. She'd look up, her face all adolescent anger and bewildered pain, her person stooped and small in the light of the streetlamp. Something inside him broke, without fail, each time.

The night he'd hired Mlle. Flandin had been the worst. What had he said to Gigi just before he closed the door on her?
Don't be so cheaply available if you want me. Go home. If I want you, I know where you are.

He must have waited at the window for an hour, his anger deteriorating into a corrosive anxiety. Yet his pride forbade that he should give in, walk out of his apartment, and make sure she hadn't fallen down a flight of steps. Eventually she'd emerged on the sidewalk, head down, shoulders hunched, like a battered camp follower. She did not look up at his window as she walked away, she and her lengthening shadow.

Three days later he heard that she had packed up and returned to England. How easily she gave up. He got drunk for the first time in his life, a hideous experience that he would not repeat for another two years, until the day he learned that she had miscarried weeks following their wedding.

He checked his watch again. Fourteen hours and fifty-five minutes before he could have her again.

Someone addressed him by his title. He glanced about the park and saw a woman waving at him from atop a handsome victoria that she drove herself. She wore a dove-gray morning gown and a matching hat atop her dark chestnut hair. Lady Wrenworth. He raised his hand and returned the salute.

They shook hands as he maneuvered his horse into a trot alongside her carriage.

“You are up early, my lord Tremaine,” said Lady Wrenworth.

“I prefer the park with the morning mist still in the branches. Is Lord Wrenworth well?”

“He has been quite well since you last saw him yesterday afternoon.” Flecks of slyness flavored her reply. It seemed that Lord Wrenworth had married no empty-headed beauty. He supposed she was the best Wrenworth could do after Gigi. “And my lady Tremaine?”

“As unfashionably hale as ever, from what I observed last night.” He let a moment pass, during which Lady Wrenworth's eyes widened, before adding, “At dinner.”

“And did you take the opportunity to observe the stars too last night? They were out en masse.”

It took him a second to remember his glib assertion that he was indeed an amateur astronomer on the night he and the Wrenworths had first been introduced. “I'm afraid I'm more of an armchair enthusiast.”

“Most of Society to this day hasn't the slightest clue about Lord Wrenworth's precise fields of study. And I'm ashamed to confess that I myself had no idea of his scientific pursuits until well after we were married. How did you become familiar with his publications, my lord, if you don't mind my curiosity?”

How?
My daughter has not been quite herself since her unfortunate miscarriage in March two years ago. But her recent friendship with Lord Wrenworth has had quite a salubrious effect on her.

“I read scientific and technological papers as a matter of course, both to gratify my interest and to keep up with the latest advances.” Quite honest so far. “One simply cannot mistake Lord Wrenworth's brilliance.”

The second part wasn't a lie either. Lord Wrenworth was, without a doubt, brilliant. But he was but one bright star in a galaxy of luminaries, in an age when advances in human understanding and machine prowess came fast and furious. Camden would not have singled him out had he not been Gigi's first paramour.

“Thank you.” Lady Wrenworth glowed. “I quite share that opinion.”

She drove off with a friendly wave.

Fourteen hours and forty-three minutes. Would this day never pass?

“I beg your pardon, Lady Tremaine.”

Gigi paused in her search for Freddie amid the throng at the Carlisles'. “Miss Carlisle.”

“Freddie asked me to tell you that he is in the garden,” said Miss Carlisle. “Behind the rose trellis.”

Gigi almost laughed. Only Freddie would think it necessary to mention—to a woman who secretly loved him, no less—that he'd be “behind the rose trellis,” a spot of seclusion highly conducive to behavior not countenanced inside the ballroom. “Thank you, though perhaps he shouldn't have troubled you.”

“It's no trouble,” Miss Carlisle said softly.

Miss Carlisle was more handsome than pretty, but she had bright eyes and a sharp, quick wit. At twenty-three, she was in her fourth season and widely believed by many to have no real interest in matrimony, since she would come into control of a comfortable inheritance on her twenty-fifth birthday and since she had turned down any and all proposals directed her way.

Would Miss Carlisle still be unmarried today if Freddie hadn't fallen head-over-heels in love with Gigi's art collection? Freddie believed he and Gigi to be kindred spirits who felt keenly the passage of time, the loss of a gently fading spring, and the inexplicability of life's joys and pains, when ironically she had bought the paintings solely in the hope of pleasing and mollifying Camden.

Why had she never told him that she preferred the future to the past and rarely bothered about the meaning of life? She felt a rush of guilt. If she had, today Freddie probably would be engaged to Miss Carlisle, a woman with a clear conscience, rather than to Gigi, who, behind his back, allowed another man to have his way with her.

Could she claim martyrdom and higher purpose when she didn't unequivocally hate the swift coupling between Camden and herself? She hadn't even thought of poor Freddie until this morning.

She found Freddie pacing in the middle of the diminutive garden, having left his roost behind the rose trellis.

“Philippa!” He came forward and placed his evening jacket about her shoulders, enveloping her in his generous warmth and a strong waft of turpentine.

She glanced at him. “Have you been painting in your good clothes again?”

“No, but I spilled some sauce on myself at dinner,” he answered sheepishly. “The butler cleaned it. Did a very decent job too.”

She slid her knuckle against his cheek. “We really should have some jackets made out of oilcloth for you.”

“Wouldn't you know it?” he cried. “That's what my mother used to say.”

She started. Had she been patronizing? Or condescending? It hadn't felt that way.

“Do you know what Angelica said to me?” Freddie asked her gleefully. “She said a man my age ought to have more care. She also said that I'm dawdling because I'm scared my next work won't turn out any good, that I should get off my lazy posterior and put paint to canvas.”

They rounded the rose trellis and sat down on the discreetly placed bench, the one on which Miss Carlisle was supposed to receive her wedding proposals. Freddie chuckled. “I know you said she thinks well of me. But she certainly doesn't sound that way tonight.”

Gigi frowned. The only painting Freddie had finished in '92 hung in her bedchamber. She always asked about his progress on his next painting, but she'd never paid any substantial attention to his creativity, considering it little more than a hobby, a gentlemanly amusement.

Miss Carlisle saw it differently. Miss Carlisle saw Freddie differently. Gigi was happy to indulge Freddie's absentmindedness and artistic hesitations—as long as he adored her, she didn't care if he lolled on the chaise longue and ate bonbons from sunrise to sunset. But Miss Carlisle saw a diamond in the rough, a man who could make quite something of himself if he but put in the effort.

Was Gigi's affection for Freddie purer or more self-serving? Or perhaps, more to the point, wouldn't Freddie prefer to have made something of his talents?

Freddie rested his head against her shoulder and they fell silent, inhaling the moist air, heavy with the sweetness of honeysuckle. She'd always felt peaceful like this, with him leaning into her and her fingers combing through his fine hair. But today that tranquillity eluded her.

Was Camden right? Was Freddie's adulation of her all construed on mistaken assumptions? She shook her head. She would not think of her husband when she was with her beloved.

“Lord Tremaine was most charitable toward me yesterday,” sighed Freddie, instantly dashing her resolution. “He could have abused me a thousand ways and I'd have submitted to it.”

Gigi sighed too. Camden had garnered nothing but praises since his return. He was said to possess the refinement of a true aristocrat and the elegance of a Renaissance courtier. And it certainly didn't hurt that he looked the way he did. If he remained in England for much longer, Felix Wrenworth would need to surrender his honorary title of the Ideal Gentleman.

She wanted to warn Freddie about Camden. But what could she say? In the official version of their history, which Freddie accepted without question, she and Camden had agreed to live separately from the very beginning. She could not utter a word against Camden without exposing herself.

“Yes, that was very considerate of him,” she mumbled.
And then he came home at night, set me against a bedpost, and stuffed me, dear Freddie.

“But are you certain he will agree to a divorce?” asked Freddie, with the innocent puzzlement of a child being told for the first time that the world was round.

Gigi immediately tensed. “Why shouldn't I be? He said so himself.”

“It's just that . . .” Freddie hesitated. “Don't mind me. I'm probably still flustered, that's all.”

She pulled away from him so she could speak to him face-to-face. “Did he say or do anything? You must not let him intimidate you.”

“No, no, nothing of the sort. He was a complete gentleman. But he asked me questions. He . . . tested me, if you will. And I, well, I don't know. I couldn't read him all that properly. But I thought—not that I'm often right in my thinking—I thought he didn't look like he'd be happy to let you go.”

Gigi shook her head. This was so far out of her perception of reality that she had no choice but to deny it. “No one is ever happy about a divorce. I don't think he regrets letting me go. He is simply peeved that I couldn't leave well enough alone and had the temerity to interrupt his orderly life for the unworthy cause of my own happiness. In any case, he's already given his word. One year and I'm free to do as I choose.”

One year from last night. She still couldn't think about it without being engulfed in vile heat.

“Amen to that,” Freddie said fervently. “You must be right. You are always right.”

When he looks at you he sees only the halo he has erected about you.

“I think I should return to the ballroom,” she said, rather abruptly. “People will start to talk. We don't want that.”

Freddie obligingly shook his head. “No, no, certainly not.”

She wished for once he'd grab her by the shoulders, damn all the people in the ballroom, and kiss her as if the whole world was on fire. This was all Camden's fault. She had been perfectly happy with who Freddie was before he got here.

She stood up, kissed Freddie lightly on the forehead, and gathered her skirts to leave. “It'll do you no harm to pay some mind to Miss Carlisle. Resume ‘Afternoon in the Park.' I'd like it for a birthday present.”