Private Arrangements (26 page)

Camden ripped off his necktie and threw it on the bed. He crossed the chamber, rinsed his face, and buried it in a towel. She was touching another man, with tenderness and affection. What else was she doing with him?

Camden slapped down the towel and caught his own reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. He looked about as happy as the citizenry of Paris on the eve of the Storming of the Bastille, primed for violence and mayhem.

He dipped a hand in the washbasin and flung a constellation of water drops against the mirror. The drops rolled down the glassy surface, obscuring the face that stared at him in unblinking belligerence.

Her obstinacy angered him. To be sure, he'd been too abrupt in proposing a new beginning. But now she'd had a whole month to think things through. That she belonged with him and not with Lord Frederick was so obvious to Camden that he couldn't even begin to understand how she could choose otherwise.

His own obstinacy, however, angered him even more. So she'd made a stupid choice. At least it was consistent and honorable. She'd said over and over again that she would swim the Channel in January for the chance to marry Lord Frederick. Why couldn't he accept it? Why did he dream and hope and plot still?

He walked to his steamer trunk and wondered whether there was any sense in even opening the thing. He hadn't returned to England on some random date. The
Campania
would leave for New York City within the week. And he'd seen enough this afternoon.

The image surfaced again in his mind, her hand against Lord Frederick's cheek, the infinite care in her touch.
Oh, Freddie, forgive me,
she'd said. And she'd looked at Camden and immediately looked away.

Camden frowned. He hadn't thought of it before. Why was Gigi asking Lord Frederick to forgive her? Except for that brief interlude when she'd forgotten herself, she'd been unwavering in her loyalty to him. And Camden couldn't imagine her divulging the intimate details of her conjugal relations to anyone, least of all Lord Frederick.

His head remained blank for another minute. Then his world turned upside down. It could have meant only one thing: There had been consequences to their lovemaking. He was going to be a father. They would have a child together.

He gripped the bedpost, unsteady on his feet, as if he were drunk on the very best champagne. A child, dear God, a child. A baby.

She'd agreed to his conditions only because she never intended to conceive. He knew her well enough to know that she would not give up her firstborn to marry Lord Frederick. She would stay with Camden and they would become a family. And given their propensity for ending up in bed together, that family would grow.

He could scarcely comprehend it; absurdly maudlin images inundated his mind. A family of his own, full of stubborn, naughty brats with bright eyes and cunning smiles. Puppies running through the house. Chubby arms held out to him for hugs. And her, regally, confidently at the center of it all.

It was all he wanted. It was everything he'd ever wanted. He pulled off his travel-crumpled coat and flung open the trunk to search for another. In the back of his mind he was vaguely aware that this wasn't how he'd wished to be chosen: by default. But he didn't care anymore. A whole new life was open before him and he was dizzy with the possibilities of it all.

Goodman entered to deposit a batch of letters and departed with the coat Camden had picked out, to be pressed. While Camden waited impatiently for his coat to return, he riffled through the stack of mail.

There was a letter from Theodora. Ironically, she'd become a frequent, faithful correspondent after their respective marriages. He'd gone from merely
Monsieur
to
Cher Monsieur,
then
Très Cher Monsieur, Cher Ami,
and now
Mon Très Cher Ami.

He skimmed through the pages. She was well. The twins were well. The winter in Buenos Aires continued mild and humid. She contemplated moving back to Europe, for the sake of the children, now that her husband, may God rest his soul, no longer needed the benefit of southern climes. And in other news, she planned to visit New York late in summer. She'd be delighted if he would call on her. She had missed him greatly these past two years.

Not long after Theodora married her grand duke, they relocated to Buenos Aires for his health. Most winters—June, July, August—they traveled to Newport, where they kept a house. Camden was usually too busy with his ventures to join the summer circuit for long stretches of time. But he occasionally sailed up, attended a few functions, and called on her, with presents for Masha and Sasha.

He'd like to see her and the twins. But not this summer. Something far more important and wonderful would keep him in England for quite a while, something called fatherhood.

Goodman returned. Camden shrugged into the newly pressed coat and wound a necktie about his collar. It took him a minute to realize the butler was still hovering about discreetly, waiting for Camden to address him.

“What is it, Goodman?” he asked, knotting the tie.

“Her ladyship would be dining at home this evening. Would your lordship be joining her?” asked Goodman.

Camden paused. There was something different about Goodman's tone. It was almost . . . wistful. Where was that quiet indignation Camden had come to expect, that sense of righteous reproach on behalf of his mistress?

“Yes, I would,” said Camden.

He was home at last. He would never leave again.

She didn't hear him as he entered the back parlor. She lolled on a chaise longue, cocooned in a gown the color of the Mediterranean at only a few feet of lucid depth, her head tilted back, her eyes lashed to the eight-foot-wide plaster medallion at the center of the ceiling.

He rarely saw this side of her, still, almost drowsy, languorous and voluptuous as a nymph on a sultry spring afternoon after a night of bacchanalia. The half of her skirts trapped under her weight pulled at the layers on top, tightening the spread of taffeta about the roundness of her hips and the mouthwatering length of her legs, long enough to connect Dover to Calais.

He feasted on her, drinking in her somnolent sensuality. But all too quickly she perceived him. She swung her unshod feet off the chaise and sat up straight.

“You look well,” he said.

His compliment took her aback. Uncharacteristically, her hand crept to her coiffure and tucked a tiny escaped strand of hair behind her right ear. “Thank you,” she replied, her tone almost diffident. “So do you.”

That was not a bad beginning. “I apologize for my earlier intrusion.”

“Oh, that. Freddie was just about to leave.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Tell him . . . of what?”

He blinked. She didn't sound coy. She sounded baffled.

She was not pregnant.

Suddenly he felt unsteady again, this time as if someone had swung a very large object at the back of his head.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

He walked to the grandfather clock and pretended to check the time on his watch, when he wanted to grab the poker next to the grate and smash everything in the room. The children they were going to have. The life they were going to share. Everything slashed and burned in a vicious assault by reality. And her, oblivious to his pain, throwing away their happiness as if it were last week's bread.

For a while, as he wound a watch that needed no winding, nobody said a thing. Then he heard her deep breath and knew, from the way his heart suddenly splintered, what she was going to say.

“There are no consequences,” she said. “Will you let me go?”

Every single cell inside him screamed no. He would most certainly not let her go. In fact, he was feeling downright nostalgic for those terrible old days when a woman had no choice whatsoever in those matters, when he could laugh cruelly, hang Lord Frederick by his ankles in the dungeon, rip her chemise to ribbons, and have her right on the dais of the great hall, under the scandalized eyes of the local bishop.

The period they'd agreed to was far from over. That she refused his entreaty did not release her from the conditions he'd set. That every touch would be fraught with peril did not diminish the allure of holding her fast to the pact.

His heart pounded. He had to close his eyes to control his ragged breath. True, there were all sorts of ways he could bludgeon her, with the diminished but still powerful husbandly prerogatives granted him under English law. But in the end, what would it accomplish?

He recognized much of his younger self in her stubborn clinging to the idea of a “good” love, in her deep, sincere, if vastly misplaced sense of personal responsibility toward Lord Frederick.

Ten years ago she'd clearly perceived the ill suit between Theodora and himself. But she hadn't enough faith to let him discover it for himself. If he were to impregnate her with the express goal of keeping her bound in matrimony, he'd have made exactly the same mistake she had.

But what if she doesn't come to her senses, or doesn't come to her senses in time?
howled some primal part of him, all but trembling in angst. His entire person seized, recoiling in dread. That was a distinct possibility. He could not allow that to happen. He could not. His world would fall apart.

Was this how she'd felt all those years ago? The anxiety. The simmering frustration. The corrosive fear that if he didn't do something, she would be lost to him forever.

Had he been nineteen, he'd have embarked on the same wrong path. At thirty-one, even having lived through the aftermath of that debacle, he was still tempted almost beyond endurance.

Only pride and his last shred of good sense saved him in the end. He wanted her to remain his wife not because he'd put an erotic spell over her or because she loved her infant too much to give it up but because she couldn't imagine her life otherwise, because she saw every breath she took intertwined with his, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both should live.

“As you wish,” he said.

“What?!”

She couldn't have heard it right. She couldn't.

“Break open that bottle of champagne. This time next year you could be Lady Philippa Stuart.”

She didn't know why she should be so stunned. Yet she was dazed with distress, barely keeping herself together, as if all these weeks she'd been holding her breath, waiting for him to return and reclaim her, vowing never to let go of her again.

He came close, too close for comfort, and sat down next to her, the light worsted wool of his summer trousers socializing insouciantly with the layers of her skirts. She became aware of the subtle scent of starch from his shirt, the spice and citron of his soap. A small part of her wanted to move away. The rest of her wanted him to trespass further, to push her down, hold her immobile, and do whatever he willed with her.

He did something even more shocking. He took her hand in his and said, “I've been a cur, haven't I? Coming here and subjecting you to this impossible situation.”

He played with her fingers absently, running the pad of an index finger across the inside of her knuckles. His hands were cool and faintly moist, as if he'd just washed and toweled them dry. The skin of his fingertips scraped her palm ever so slightly, reminding her that he did more than playing piano and rendering scaled drawings with those hands.

She wanted to kiss his hand, every roughened finger pad, every knuckle. She wanted to suck on the ball of his thumb and lick the lines and wrinkles of his palm.

If only she'd conceived. If only. If only. If only.

She had desperately wanted it. With the relentlessness of garden weeds she had wished it, dreamed it, desired it. It would have been an answered prayer, a clarion call, a catalyst around which all future courses of action would instantly crystallize.

But it didn't happen.

“You'll be returning to New York City, then?” she said, careful not to choke.

“On the next steamer, I would imagine. My engineers are quite excited about the progress of our automobile. My accountants salivate at the investment opportunities, given the current upheaval in the stock market,” he said, as if his departure had nothing to do with the end of their union. “If you are in the mood for acquiring some rail lines, you should come to the States end of this year or beginning of next.”

“I will keep that in mind,” she said numbly.

He rose. She stood up too.

“You'll need to watch out for fortune-hunting young ladies now,” she said, wondering whether her awkward chuckle sufficiently hid her unhappiness.

“And title-hunting ones too.” He smiled. “And those who are simply dazzled by the way I walk and talk.”

“Oh, yes, especially watch out for those.”

Don't cry. Don't cry now.

Suddenly she realized that she was now the one holding on to him, not the other way around. He but allowed his hands to remain in her panicked grip. He was done. He'd said everything he wanted to say to her.

Let go,
she thought.
Let go. Let go. Let go.

When she at last did what she commanded, it was not through force of will. Her hands slackened and slid off his because it was not her place, nor her privilege, to touch him of her own volition.

“Good-bye, then,” she said. “And a safe crossing.”

“I wish you every happiness,” he said, with grave formality. Then, with a swift peck to her cheek, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

She didn't know what was so sweet about a sorrow that felt like her still-beating heart impaled upon the fangs of Cerberus. She could only watch hopelessly as he disappeared from her view, from her life.

This time for good.