Private Arrangements (25 page)

“Marriages are curious things,” said Mrs. Rowland. “Many are exceedingly fragile. But others are exceptionally resilient, able to recover from the most grievous injuries.”

He would like to believe her. But the marriages he'd known had been by and large indifferent. “You speak from personal experience, I hope.”

“I do,” she said firmly.

“Tell me more,” he said. “I demand something at least halfway sensational in return for the divulging of my own unspeakable past.”

She picked up her teacup and then, rather resolutely, set it down again. “Sensational it wouldn't be. The most sensational thing I've ever done in my life was blurting out to you that I wished to marry you. But it should come as no surprise now that I had indeed wished to marry you, more than thirty years ago.”

It was still a surprise to hear her speak of it so candidly.

“I believed I had the looks, the comportment, and your mother's approval. The only obstacles were your youth and your certain disinclination to marry a girl handpicked by your mother, but I considered neither insurmountable. When you were done with university, I'd still be of a marriageable age. And in the meanwhile I would educate myself in the classics, so as to distinguish myself from other women who would be vying for your hand.

“My plan no doubt strikes you as both arrogant and simpleminded. It was. But I believed fervently in it. In hindsight, I can see that we'd have dealt disastrously together—I'd have been dismayed by your promiscuity and you in turn repelled by my sanctimonious meddlesomeness, as my daughter has called it. But in those heady days of 1862, you were mythologically perfect and I was fixated on you.

“Needless to say, when Mr. Rowland began his courtship, I was not thrilled with his attention. I craved rank and disdained money made in sooty ways, whereas he possessed nothing but the latter. I didn't understand why my father welcomed his calls, until I did as well. Believe me, having to marry him for such a mortifying thing as my family's ruinous finances did not further endear him to me.”

There was regret in her voice. Suddenly Langford realized that the regret wasn't for him but for the long-departed Mr. Rowland. He felt an odd pulse of jealousy. “You mean to tell me your marriage eventually recovered from that grievous injury?”

“It did. But it took a long time. When I married Mr. Rowland, I decided to be a right proper martyr. While I refused to lower myself by seeking out your news or succumbing to affairs, I also refused to see him as anything other than a legal entity to whom I sacrificed my dreams for the sake of my family. Even when my sentiments finally changed, I didn't know what to do. It seemed ridiculous that I should feel something other than duty and obligation toward a man I'd called only Mr. Rowland for so many years.”

Her voice trailed off. She finally lifted the cucumber sandwich to her lips again. “We had three good years before he passed away.”

He didn't know what to say. He'd always considered happy marriages to be the stuff of fairy tales, about as likely as fire-breathing dragons in this mechanized age. He found himself ill qualified to comment on her loss.

In the silence, she ate the cucumber sandwich with great daintiness. When she was done, she shook her head and smiled wistfully. “Now I am reminded why polite society does not engage in rampant honesty. Awkward, isn't it?”

“Not so much as it is thought-provoking,” he answered. “I don't think I've had a more frank conversation in my entire life, on things that mattered.”

“And now we've nothing left to talk about except the weather,” she said wryly.

“Allow me to correct your misconception here, madam,” he said, with equal dryness. “I understand that beneath your facade of ideal femininity, you are a bluestocking who just might be learned enough to appreciate my vast erudition.”

“Oh-ho, watch that arrogance, Your Grace,” she said, grinning a little. “You might find it to be exactly the other way around. While you were out carousing nightly, I read everything that was ever jotted down during classical antiquity.”

“That may very well be. But have you an original thought on it?” he challenged.

She leaned forward slightly. He noted, with pleasure, the gleam in her eyes. “You have a few days to listen, sir?”

Chapter Twenty-five

3 July 1893

. . .
p
icnic . . . capture . . . light . . . tree . . . shadow . . . purple . . .”

Gigi stared at Freddie's moving lips, her concentration stranded somewhere beyond the Cape of Good Hope. What was he talking about? And why was he speaking so earnestly of such incomprehensible and inconsequential things when barbarians had broken through the gate, torched the bailey, and were about to storm the keep?

They were in trouble. They were in trouble so deep and wide that the best alpinists broke down and wept halfway up and the greatest sailors turned around and headed home long before reaching the other shore.

Then she remembered. He was talking about “Afternoon in the Park,” and he was talking about it because she'd asked him to, so that they could carry on a decent conversation and that she could pretend, at least for the duration of his call, that all was well, that the smoke darkening the sky was merely the kitchen roasting a few boars for the evening feast.

She blinked and tried to listen more attentively.

Two days after their return to London, Camden had left to visit his grandfather in Bavaria. But the damage was done. He'd been gone more than a month now, and not one of the nearly eight hundred hours had gone by without her revisiting their last night together and catching her breath anew at his intrepid offer. Everything reminded her of him. The details of her own town house, which she'd barely noticed anymore, had suddenly become a narrative of all her once-fervid hopes: the piano, the paintings, the Cyclades marble she'd selected for the floor of the vestibule because it matched the color of his eyes exactly.

Had she made the right choice?

She knew what it was like to have made an unethical choice. She knew the fear and the corrosive anxiety that bled into and adulterated every joy, every delight. In this instance, she was fairly sure she hadn't come down on the wrong side of the moral divide.

But where was the sense of inner strength conferred by the right choice? Where was the peaceful slumber and the clear sense of purpose? Why, if she'd made the right decision, did it feel oppressive and, on some days, palpably suffocating?

She gave Freddie permission to resume his daily calls, to silence the gossip that the trip to Devon had generated. Freddie's renewed visits quelled the rumors but did nothing to soothe her agitation. The rapport they shared was still there, but the sense that they belonged together was becoming as frayed as a tenth-century tapestry, on the verge of disintegrating altogether with the least exposure to the elements.

“Freddie,” she interrupted him.

“Yes?”

She broke the moratorium on physical contact that had been in place since the day of Camden's return and kissed him.

It was always nice kissing Freddie. Sometimes even very nice. But she needed more than nice. She had to have something surpassingly ardent—a veritable conflagration—to erase the burning imprints her husband had left on her, to eradicate from memory her response to him, all hungry abandon and desperate need.

The kiss was very nice.

And she spent the entirety of it thinking of the very person she was hoping to forget.

She pulled back and pasted on a smile. “Forgive the digression. Go on, tell me more about the painting.”

Freddie looked to the door as if expecting to see tweeny maids giggle and then run off with news of what they'd espied. When the corridors remained silent, he leaned forward and tried to kiss her again.

“No.” She stopped him. She didn't want any more reminders of her vastly different reactions to the two men. Or of the fervor Camden effortlessly fomented in her. “We still shouldn't. That was my fault.”

Disappointment dimmed Freddie's eyes. But he nodded slowly, ceding to her wishes. “Three hundred and nine days to go.” He sighed. “I swear, the days are thrice as long as they were before.”

In this, at least, they were in perfect accord. She turned to his art again, since it was one of the few safe topics left to them. “I'm glad, then, you've been able to keep yourself busy. I hear Lady Wrenworth is pleased with her portrait.”

Freddie revived a bit at her compliment. “I had dinner at the Carlisles' two days ago. Miss Carlisle asked me to paint her portrait too. We will probably start next week.”

“It seems she has a high enough opinion of your skills, at least.”

“Well, she did warn me she would be highly critical if it didn't meet her standards.” Freddie smiled a little. “Did you know that she's been to an Impressionist exhibition? All this time I thought you were the only person in my acquaintance who knew anything about the Impressionists.”

Gigi bolted straight up. Freddie, startled, rose too. “Is everything all right? Is it Miss Carlisle? I should have asked you about it fir—”

“No, it isn't Miss Carlisle.” Oh, if it only were. If only Freddie and Miss Carlisle had been up to some mischief. “It's me. I should have told you long ago: I don't know anything about the Impressionists.”

“But you have the most marvelous collection I've ever seen. You—”

“I bought them wholesale. I bought out three private galleries. Because Tremaine liked the Impressionists.”

Freddie looked as if she'd just told him that all nine of the queen's children were illegitimate. “But—does this mean—were you—”

“Yes. I was in love with him. I wanted him for more than his title. But I overstepped and my marriage withered on the vine.” She took a long breath. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier. Very sorry. I apologize.”

Freddie swallowed, gamely trying to digest the past she'd suddenly dumped on him. Then he cleared his throat, and she tensed. Dear God, what would she say if he asked her whether she still loved her husband? She could not lie to him, not at this juncture. Yet she could not bring herself to face the truth. Could not handle the abject terror of being in love—the kind of love that had already once before derailed her life.

Freddie looked as conflicted as she felt. He glanced down at his shoes, stuck a hand in his pocket, drew the hand out again, and fiddled with the fob of his watch. “You—you really don't know anything about the Impressionists?”

She didn't know whether to laugh from relief or to weep. Perhaps Freddie loved her only for her paintings. Perhaps he was as afraid of the question as she.

She pointed at a canvas directly behind him, a landscape of blue sky, blue water, and a French village with ochre roofs and porridge-colored walls. “Do you know who painted that?”

Freddie turned to look. “Yes, I do.”

“I don't. Or at least I don't recall anymore. I bought it along with twenty-eight other pieces.” She touched his cheek. “Oh, Freddie, forgive me. I—”

She stopped cold. Slowly, as if expecting a knife-wielding assassin, she removed her hand from Freddie's face and turned toward the door. Her husband stood there, leaning against the doorjamb.

Her heart gave a leap of pure, startled joy.

“Lady Tremaine.” He nodded. “Lord Frederick.”

Her pleasure instantly decayed into self-recrimination. How could she be so vile? She'd completely forgotten about Freddie, as if he wasn't there, as if he'd never been there.

Freddie bowed awkwardly. “Lord Tremaine.”

She could return neither Camden's greeting nor his gaze. She only vaguely recalled the time when she'd been dead certain that a divorce was the key to unlocking her happiness, when she'd fully, confidently anticipated putting him behind her once and for all.

Why hadn't she seen it? Why hadn't she realized sooner that she had been seeking that one last battle, a titanic clash, one for the ages?

And why must Camden have turned everything on its head? To go so far as to suggest that he bore an equal share of the culpability. To ask her if she wanted to start afresh, a new life together. Was he mad?

Or was she?

“I was—I was just about to leave,” said Freddie.

“Please, Lord Frederick, do not discommode yourself on my behalf. Lady Tremaine's friends are always welcome in this house,” said Camden, all gallantry and graciousness. “I've had a long journey; if you will excuse me.”

As soon as Camden was out of earshot, Freddie turned to her, half in shock, half in panic. “Do you think he saw us—”

“No.” She'd have known. He couldn't have been there for longer than a few seconds.

“You are sure?”

“Tremaine is no more a threat to my physical well being—if that's what you are worried about—than you are.”

Freddie took her hands in his. “I guess—I guess that isn't what I'm really worried about. I'm only afraid that the more time he spends around you, the less willing he will be to let you go.”

No, it was the other way around. The more time she spent around Camden, the more impossible it became for her to let
him
go.

She patted Freddie's hand. “Don't fret, darling. No one can take me away from you.”

She'd made the right choice. She had.

If only the reassurances she offered Freddie didn't sound to her own ears like so much mendacious drivel.