“Why not? Why can’t you simply divorce me without knowing who I would marry?”
“Divorce would cost us thousands of pounds,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “I may look like a lackluster estate manager, Helene, but I’m not. Why in God’s name would I put that drain on the estate when there’s no point to it? Besides, remarrying would take an Act of Parliament. Fairfax-Lacy might have been able to obtain it, but there’s few others with the same power. If you want to take a lover, take one. God knows, it will do you good.”
He watched with satisfaction as color crept into his wife’s porcelain cheeks. Damned if he knew why one of his primary pleasures in life was to get Helene to show some signs of life.
“I don’t wish to take a lover,” she said. “I merely want to rid myself of you, Rees.”
“By means other than murder, I suppose you mean?”
“I’m willing to consider all options,” she said coolly.
Rees laughed, more like a bark than a laugh. “You’ll have to take a lover. You cannot petition on the grounds of adultery, only I can. Has someone already replaced Fairfax-Lacy, then?”
Her cheeks flared and she swallowed. “I could hire a man to stand as my consort,” she said in a low voice.
“I see no reason for wasting substance on lawyers and bribes and the rest of it.”
“I can pay that sum out of my dowry. And I’m quite certain that my mother would contribute a substantial amount as well.”
“I don’t give a hang whose money it is. There’s no point to it, Helene! We married, and married we stay. I don’t think it’s such an uncomfortable life. After all, it’s not as if I’m a dog in the manger, am I? Surely you can find someone in London to warm your toes!”
Helene barely heard him, barely listened as insult after calculated insult broke over her head. She just stared at him instead. Every time they were apart for a length of time, she managed to school herself into remembering only her husband’s disgusting habits and his slovenly dress. But then, when she saw him again, she couldn’t help noticing the way his eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks, and the fact that his lower lip was so full. The better to sneer at her, obviously. But then he had dimples in both cheeks and they offset how deep-set his eyes were. Oh, Rees wasn’t beautiful. He had a broad nose, after all, and a shambling way of walking, and he was far too big for beauty. Simon Darby, now there was a beautiful man. Simon and Rees together were like Beauty and the Beast, except that God help her, she couldn’t help but think the Beast was—was—
“Damn it all, Helene, I’m doing my best to drive you into a frenzy and you’re not even listening,” Rees said now, with obvious frustration. “I must be losing my touch.”
“I don’t care if you don’t want to spend the money,” she snapped, looking away from his face with a tinge of self-disgust. “I ceased to take your wishes into account quite a few years ago.”
“There’s my Helene,” Rees said, leaning back again. “It throws me into a fidget if you don’t snap back with a rejoinder. It’s as if the sun didn’t rise.”
“Don’t you see how much better it would be for both of us if we divorced and didn’t have to snap at each other anymore?” she said. “We’re at our worst around each other. I know I am. I turn into a veritable shrew and you—you—”
“My wife a shrew?” he said mockingly. “Never say so!”
Helene swallowed. Somehow she had to break through the barrage of mocking remarks he always threw at her. He had to listen. “We would both be better off if we were no longer married to each other.”
“Can’t see that it would make any difference. I’m quite comfortable as I am. I rather like having a wife around.”
“You can hardly say that I’m around!”
“Your presence, ephemeral or otherwise, keeps the fortune-hunters away,” he pointed out. “Were we to divorce, I’d have carriages breaking down before my railings every other day, with debutantes waltzing in here to play me their scales.”
“But Rees,” Helene said desperately, “I wish to marry someone else.”
“Who?”
She was silent.
“Are you telling me,” Rees demanded, “that you don’t care who you marry, as long as you rid yourself of me?”
She nodded, a trifle jerkily. “Precisely.”
He opened his mouth and shut it. “I can’t imagine why we’re having this conversation,” he said finally. “I refuse to grant you a divorce.” Rees stared at his wife in frustration. In general, he had no trouble understanding women. For the most part, he found them bland, foolish, and greedy in a petty sort of way for things like bonnet strings and silk stockings. But he had never made the mistake of underestimating his wife’s intelligence.
“I should have left that house party the very moment I met you, back in ’07,” he said suddenly. “Young fool that I was.”
“I wish you had,” Helene said.
“But I didn’t.” Rees’s voice had a harsh edge that surprised himself. “I still remember walking into the drawing room and seeing you playing the piano—”
She shook her head. “It was a harpsichord.”
“Anyway, there you were, wearing a yellow sort of gown and playing Purcell’s Fairest Isle.”
“I had no idea you were so sentimental, Rees,” she said with perfect indifference.
“I would hardly call it sentimental. I try to keep the image in mind because it encapsules the most crack-brained impulse of my life: asking you to elope with me.”
He couldn’t tell whether he was annoying her or not. Lord, but she had gained control since they were married! In those days, the merest comment would drive her to burst into tears and throw something at his head. He eyed her rigid, dried up posture and wondered if he didn’t prefer the old Helene.
“It was hardly an impulse, Rees, given as we had known each other for some months by the time you asked me to marry you. But believe me, if I could take back my acceptance of your drivellingly insulting request, I would. It has ruined my life.”
There was a heartfelt truth to her statement that silenced the witticism Rees was contemplating. He looked harder at his wife. She had dark shadows under her eyes and her hair was pulled up as tightly as it could be in those infernal braids she fancied.
“Is something the matter, Helene?” he asked. “I mean, something more than the usual?”
“You are.” She raised her eyes, and the despair in them struck him in the chest. “You are, Rees.”
“But why?” he asked, in honest bewilderment. “I’m far less scandalous than I was a few years ago, when I…”he paused and decided to skip over the Russian dancers, “when I was younger. I have never interfered with your doings. What could possibly be so awful about being married to me? I think it’s a position that many women must envy. If you’re lucky, I’ll fall dead to the ground like Esme Rawlings’s first husband, and you can become a rich widow.”
That was a fairly lame joke, but surely it deserved a twitch of a smile.
“Honest to God, Helene, I simply don’t see what’s so objectionable about my being your husband. If I were requiring you to fulfill your wifely duties, I could understand.” He stopped and the sentence hung on the air. He wished he hadn’t brought up that old painful subject.
“I want a child,” she said quietly. “I—I feel quite strongly about it.”
“Still?” he said, without thinking. Helene was perched on the very edge of the couch, her delicate fingers clenched in her lap. There wasn’t much that he liked about his wife’s body, not really, but he always loved her hands. More fool he, he thought, remembering that he had been stupid enough to think that she would caress him with the same tenderness with which she caressed the piano keys.
A slight frown creased her forehead. “Yes, still. As I told you last spring. Why wouldn’t I still wish for a child?”
When Rees was surprised, he generally spoke what he was thinking and regretted it later. “Because you’re not exact
ly…”he eyed her.
“What?”
“Well, motherly,” he said, feeling, belatedly, a distinct sensation of danger.
“Do explain precisely what you mean, Rees.” She seemed to be speaking from between clenched teeth.
Rees resisted an impulse to check for breakable objects in her vicinity. He waved vaguely in the air. “Motherly…ah, fertile, fecund, you know what I mean!”
“Fertile?” He could hear her teeth grinding. “You venture to say to me that you think I am lacking in fertility? You have assessed my abilities, as if I were a sow you thought to buy at market?”
“Wrong word,” he said, floundering deeper. “I only meant—”
“Yes?”
But Rees had woken to his own foolishness. “Why in God’s name would you want a child, Helene?” Then he narrowed his eyes. “What am I thinking? Naturally you want a child because all your friends have children, don’t they?”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“Esme Bonnington dropped that brat last spring,” he said with deliberate crudeness, “Carola Pinkerton has a daughter, and there’s Darby with a son. That pretty much covers your intimate circle, doesn’t it? Oh, wait…I forgot the Duchess of Girton. She too has produced an heir, has she not?”
There was no color whatsoever in Helene’s face now. He almost felt a gleam of pity.
“Gina’s son was born last December. But I assure you, Rees, that my desire for children has little, if anything, to do with the good fortune of my friends.”
Rees made a rude sound and stood up, wandering toward the piano. “That’s garbage, Helene. Women are all the same. You want what everyone else has, and you’ll go to any means to get it. Well, don’t count on me. I refuse to petition for divorce. I see no reason to put myself through an experience so expensive and ruinous to my reputation—” he threw it over his shoulder—“aren’t you pleased, Helene? I am finally gaining an aversion to scandal.”
Just then something caught his eye. “What the hell!” He bent over the sheets of paper on top of the piano. His vicious little wife had clearly enjoyed herself by destroying his score. “What in the hell did you do here? That line must dip. You’ve turned it to a bloody orange seller’s tune!” He spun around but the room was empty.
Three
In Which Tempers Are Lost
Number Forty, Berkeley Square
London
After women have been friends for ten years, or even one year, they can generally judge each other’s state of mind from five yards. Esme Bonnington, sometimes known as Countess Bonnington and sometimes as Infamous Esme, counted herself a near scientist when it came to the nice art of reading emotion. When her friend Helene’s braids were elegantly nestled on her head, without even a stray strand of hair to be seen, all was well. But today Lady Godwin’s backbone was as rigid as if it had been welded in place, her eyes were narrowed to chips of ice, and—most telling of all—wisps of hair were framing her face.
“What on earth is the matter?” Esme asked, trying to remember whether she, Esme, had done anything to outrage Helene’s sense of propriety. No. Since her second marriage, Esme quite prided herself on being about as scandalous as a cow. That meant Helene had encountered her husband.
With one chilly glance, Helene sent Esme’s butler, Slope, from the room. “I was going to ask Slope to bring us some tea,” Esme said with some disappointment.
“You can live without a lemon tart for at least another hour or so,” Helene snapped.
Helene lived on the air, from the look of her. But Esme was used to solid nourishment, and having asked Helene for tea, she would like to partake. She rang the bell to summon Slope. “I would guess that you have asked Rees for a divorce again?”
“He won’t even listen to me, Esme.” Despair and anger battled in her voice. “He doesn’t care a bean that I want a child.”
“Oh, Helene,” Esme said. “I’m so—”
“He laughed it off as a matter of competition,” Helene interrupted. “He won’t even try to understand what it feels like to watch other women have children and know that you are unable.” Her voice caught on the last word.
“Men are insensitive brutes,” Esme said sympathetically. “And your husband is among the worst of the species.”
“Anyone’s husband is better than mine! Do you remember when I told you after Miles died that I envied you your rapprochement, even if it was brief?”
“Of course.”
“I meant it. I would give anything to have married someone like your first husband.”
“Miles and I were far from an enviable couple,” Esme pointed out. “When he died, we hadn’t lived together in ten years. How can you envy a marriage like ours?”
“I don’t envy your marriage. I envy your husband. When you told Miles that you wished to have a child, what did he do?”
Esme’s eyes filled with understanding. “He agreed.”
“And if you had asked him for a divorce?”
“He would have agreed to that as well,” Esme said, swallowing a lump in her throat. “Miles was a truly amiable person.”
“He was better than amiable,” Helene said fiercely. “He was a kind person. He would have done anything for you, Esme, you know he would have.”
“You wouldn’t have liked being married to Miles, Helene. He was so placid, truly.”
“I am placid!” The only argument one might have with that statement came from Helene’s voice, a near shriek. “I would have—would have—oh, this is absurd! I don’t want to argue over who has the worst husband. It’s just that I want a child so much. I have for years! And now Carola has a perfect little daughter, and you only had to ask Miles in order to have a baby, and now Henrietta Darby, who didn’t even think it possible to carry a child, has a son—” her words were lost in a torrent of sobs.
Esme stroked her arm. “I’m sorry, Helene. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s just not fair!” It burst from her like rain from a drainpipe. “I don’t ever complain about my husband; you know I don’t, Esme. But why did I ever, ever have to meet Rees Holland and marry him! Why didn’t my mother stop me? Why didn’t someone come after me when we eloped? Why did I have to end up married to an utter degenerate when the rest of you—you and Carola and Gina—all of you have taken your husbands back and they have been utterly decent about it?”
“Actually, my first husband is dead,” Esme felt it necessary to add.
“That’s irrelevant! Sebastian will probably give you five more children if you wish.”
Esme had never seen her friend Helene show a stronger emotion than annoyance and once, when Esme had behaved appallingly, a sharp disgust. Helene’s every motion and thought was effected with a maximum of grace and control. But now the intricate braids that graced the top of her head were tilting slightly to the side. Her pale blue eyes were blazing and her normally pale complexion was pink with rage and grief.
Still, Esme thought she ought to point out that her first husband Miles’s death was hardly irrelevant. “That seems a bit harsh,” she said cautiously. “After all, Miles would far rather be alive than—”
Helene cast her a look that stopped that proper sentiment in its tracks. “Save it for the Sewing Circle,” she snapped. “Miles’s death means that you didn’t have to live with the man.”
The reference to the Sewing Circle stung; Esme had had a brief-lived foray into respectable widowhood before making a scandalous second marriage, whereupon the righteous woman leading the Circle repudiated Esme’s skills with the needle. “Miles and I may not have suited each other, but it isn’t as if I disliked marriage itself. After all, I did marry Sebastian, and I live with him, very happily too.”
“Cut bait,” Helene said impatiently. “Can’t we speak the truth in private? Men are a dreadful aberration of humanity: selfish, disgusting and forever rooting about looking for their own pleasures. Carola may well be besotted with Tuppy’s dubious skills at fishing or whatever skills he
claims to have, but will it last? There’ll come a day when she’ll realize that he’s just like all the rest.”
“Why, Helene, I had no idea that you felt this way!” Esme cried. “What on earth did you like about Miles, if you find all men to be selfish beasts?”
“Miles would have given you anything you asked for. He honored the vows of marriage. You wanted a child; he gave you one. You wanted him to leave the house; he did so. And he never bothered you again, did he?”
“No,” Esme said, “yet—”
But Helene had risen and was pacing back and forth. “Rees and Miles are like night and day! Rees threw me out of our house years ago; he hasn’t said a civil word to me since; and all of London knows the depths of depravity to which he has sunk!”
Esme had to admit the truth of that. “Miles did have a mistress,” she put in.
“A quiet, respectable liaison,” Helene said. “No hysterics on either side. Lady Childe is an indubitably respectable woman, and while I can hardly sanction such a liaison outside marriage, it’s infinitely better than taking a woman of the streets and putting her into your wife’s bedchamber. If one more person tells me how much they sympathize with me due to my husband’s proclivities, I shall—I shall scream!”
Somewhat to Esme’s relief, Slope appeared with a tea tray. He didn’t seem to notice Helene’s disheveled appearance, but then he was highly paid to overlook any sort of irregularity. Esme had hired him in the days when she was the toast of all London and doing her best to live up to a reputation as Infamous Esme.
“We’ll think of something,” she said consolingly, as she poured tea. “For one thing, Rees is far more likely to agree to divorce if you actually had a lover, Helene. How can he possibly sue you for adultery? You have one of the most irreproachable reputations in London. We have to change that before divorce is possible.”
“It won’t work,” Helene said dully. “I know that you like creating these little scenarios, Esme. But I could hardly trick a man into my bed. The only person who has shown interest in years was Fairfax-Lacy. That came to nothing, and now he’s married and probably Bea is in a delicate condition already!” She stood at the window, with her back to the room, but Esme didn’t think she was admiring the view.