Page 51 of Private Arrangements
In the bright orange glow of the park's artificial lights, she was something out of an old Norse fairy tale, elemental, dangerous, and downright crackling with sensual energy. More than a few men in the crowd stared at her, eyes round, mouths half open.
He gazed at her until he could no longer stand the asphyxiation in his chest. He didn't know what he'd been thinking. Somehow he had thought—had hoped, in the baser chambers of his heart—that she might appear wan and wretched beneath an impassive facade. That she yet pined for him. That she was still in love with him, despite all evidence to the contrary.
This woman did not need him.
He turned and walked away. He stopped the reports and the lunacy. He tried to forget that he'd gawked at her like a hungry mutt with its front paws upon the windowsill of a delicatessen. He made up to Mrs. Allen for his neglect and inattentiveness.
And then came the encounter on the canal.
Mrs. Allen looked very fetching in her peach-and-cream Worth gown. The scenery behind her, however, held its own. The houses that lined the canal were painted in unabashedly spirited colors, the hues of a fashionable Englishwoman's wardrobe: rose, yellow, dove gray, powder blue, russet, and puce. As the sun approached its zenith, the canal glittered, ripples of silver beneath the boats that plied the waterways.
“Oh, my goodness gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Allen, latching on to his elbow. “You must look at that!”
He turned away from the storefront display of model ships he'd been perusing and looked in the direction she pointed.
“That open window on the second story. Can you see the man and the woman inside?” Mrs. Allen giggled.
Obligingly, he scanned the windows on the opposite bank, until he felt the weight of someone's gaze on him.
Gigi!
She sat at the bow of a pleasure craft a stone's throw away, under the shade of a white parasol, a diligent tourist out to reap all the beauty and charm Copenhagen had to offer. She studied him with a distressed concentration, as if she couldn't quite remember who he was. As if she didn't want to.
He looked different. His hair reached down to his nape, and he'd sported a full beard for the past two years.
Their eyes met. She bolted upright from the chair. The parasol fell from her hand, clanking against the deck. She stared at him, her face pale, her gaze haunted. He'd never seen her like this, not even on the day he left her. She was stunned, her composure flayed, her vulnerability visible for miles.
As her boat glided past him, she picked up her skirts and ran along the port rail, her eyes never leaving his. She stumbled over a line in her path and fell hard. His heart clenched in alarm, but she barely noticed, scrambling to her feet. She kept running until she was at the stern and could not move another inch closer to him.
Mrs. Allen chose that moment to link her arm through his and lay her head against his upper arm, rubbing her cheek against his sleeve like a well-scratched kitty.
“I'm famished,” said Mrs. Allen. “Won't you take me to a restaurant that serves cold buffet?”
“Of course,” he said dumbly.
Gigi didn't move from her rigid pose at the rail, but she suddenly looked worn down, as if she'd been standing there, in that same spot, for all the eighteen hundred and some days since she'd last seen him.
She still loved him.The thought echoed wildly in his head, making him hot and dizzy.She still loved him.
All at once, he could not even recall what had been her trespass against him. He knew only, with absolute certainty, that he had been the world's premier ass for the past half decade. And all he wanted was everything he'd sworn would never tempt him again.
He sleepwalked through lunch and rushed Mrs. Allen back to her hotel for her afternoon beauty nap, turning down her invitation to join her as if she exhibited symptoms of the bubonic plague. He raced about Copenhagen, to the barber's, the jeweler's, then back to Claudia's house for his best day coat.
He walked into his wife's hotel with a freshly shaven jaw and a wilting bunch of hydrangea bought from an elderly flower vendor about to go home for the day. He felt as nervous and stupid as a pig living next door to a butcher. Standing before the hotel clerk, he had to clear his throat twice before he could get his question out.
“Is . . . is Lady Tremaine here?”
“No, sir, I'm sorry,” said the clerk. “Lady Tremaine just left.”
“I see. When is she expected to return?” He would wait right here. He would never go anywhere again without her.
“I'm sorry, sir,” said the clerk. “Lady Tremaine is no longer with us. She vacated her suite and departed for the harbor. I believe she was trying to board theMargrethe,leaving at two o'clock.”
It was five minutes past two o'clock.
He raced out of the hotel, flagged down the first carriage for hire, and promised the cabbie the entire contents of his wallet if the cab but reached the harbor before theMargretheleft. But when he arrived, all he could see of theMargrethewas three columns of smoke in the distance.
He gave the cabbie double the usual fare anyway and stared at the horizon. He could not believe it. Could not believe that all his hopes of a future together would come to aught, so swiftly and pitilessly.
