Page 40 of Private Arrangements
“No, I tell her if she cannot look them in the eyes, she can look at the ridges of their noses and chances are they won't know the difference. I tell her that smiling with her head lowered is almost as good as smiling with her face raised to someone, perhaps even more alluring. And do you know why I give advice that is contrary to my own interests in the matter?”
She shook her head miserably, wishing time to go back, wishing all her crimes undone. She didn't want to hear about Theodora, didn't want to be reminded that he remained above reproach while she had stooped to swindling.
But he went on inexorably. “Because she trusts me and I donotabuse her trust to further my chances with her. Becausebeing in love does not give you any excuse to be less than honorable,Lady Tremaine.”
He pulled back from her abruptly, his breathing uneven. “You may think you are in love, Gigi, but I doubt very much that you know what love is. Because it has been all about you, whatyouwant, whatyouneed, whatyoucan and cannot do without.”
He moved further away. Too late did Gigi remember that the bedchamber had two doors.
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
He 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, minusculesalle de séjouras 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.”
