Grahame, Lucia (5 page)

By an effort of will, I managed to slow my racing pulse and turn
my eyes calmly upon my companion, knowing that they betrayed nothing.

In the Rotonde, we contemplated Melpomene, the muse of tragedy,
moved on to admire the first Lycian
Apollo,
and presently came to the
wonderful Silenus tending the infant Bacchus.

"Have you ever been to Florence, Madame Brooks?" Sir
Anthony inquired as we stood before the affecting pair.

"Oh no," I said, with a pang. That unknown city was
laden with private significance for me. My grandmother had once lived there,
for what I suspected was one of the few truly happy intervals in her life;
Frederick had studied there; and in the early days of our marriage we had often
promised each other that one day we would visit it together.

Frederick.

I seized upon his name as a defense against the amazing flood of
sheer animal hunger that had swept through me only minutes earlier.

"My husband studied in Florence," I told Sir Anthony,
"and we often planned to visit it together. He wanted so much to show me
Michelangelo's
David."

"Oh yes, the
David
is perfection itself," agreed
Sir Anthony. "But if you ever go to Florence, be sure not to overlook his
Bacchus,
which is in the Bargello. I like it better than the
David,
even if
it is not so impressive a work."

"And why are you so fond of it?" I asked with a little
smile, for it amused me to think that while my drunken husband had favored the
alert and utterly sober David, the sober Sir Anthony would harbor a preference
for the god of intoxication.

"The
Bacchus
himself is exquisite, but the little
satyr at the god's feet is utterly enchanting," explained Sir Anthony.
"When you come upon those eyes from a certain angle, it seems like a
living thing. The first time I saw it, it brought me up short. I felt as if I'd
stumbled upon something from another world."

As he went on to describe, in his low voice, the effect of that
seductive, pagan gaze, I wondered what wayward string in his reserved English
soul had vibrated to it so strongly.

"How you surprise me!" I told him artlessly, as we moved
on. Regrettably, I had never mastered the art of proper English conversation,
which dictates that, unless one is with intimate friends, one must rigidly
confine oneself to the most impersonal subjects. However, I had already gone
too far to turn back, so I plunged on. "I would have taken you for a
worshiper of Apollo, not of Bacchus!"

"And you'd have been right, I suppose," said Sir Anthony
with a rueful laugh. "Certainly Apollo is far more admirable. He never
spoke a false word, you know. But Bacchus was always gentle, even in anger,
while Apollo, as you must recall, could be very cruel."

"Cruel?" I said. "Apollo, the healer?"

"He slew Niobe's children," Sir Anthony reminded me.

I felt my face close up.

"Yes," I murmured. "He was very cruel."

Thereafter, for a time, every image I saw evoked thoughts of
destruction and loss and drew my mind relentlessly back to the sorrows I had
come here to forget. They seemed to chastise me for the frivolous spirit in
which I had undertaken the day's adventure.

But once we had moved into the Salle de Psyche, the frivolity of
my nature began to reassert itself—with some help from Sir Anthony.

We spent a long time admiring the
Venus de Milo.

"The perfect woman," I remarked as I studied the serene
loveliness of her features.

"Not quite perfect," said Sir Anthony dryly.

I glanced up at him.

"You don't regard her as the ne plus ultra of feminine
beauty?"

His eyes lingered on me with the same unrevealing expression I had
seen in them at our first meeting.

"No," was all he said.

But later, just before we left, we agreed that we must pay our
respects to the
Nik
è
of Samotbrace,
and Sir Anthony admired her
so extravagantly that at last I felt compelled to observe, "So
that
is
your
belle id
é
ale!
A woman with wings!"

He gave this comment a moment or two of earnest consideration
before he rejected it cautiously.

"Nooo," he said. "Not quite."

But then his mouth began to twitch.

"I
prefer women with hands," he announced, and then added, after
a tiny pause, "and lips."

There was nothing insinuating in the matter-of-fact way he said
this. His tone was not at all suggestive. It was simply mischievous, and I
laughed.

"I suppose you favor the works that have been restored,
then," I said.

"What, the ones all patched together like Frankenstein's
monster with heads that don't belong to them!" He sounded highly insulted.
"Certainly not! I detest sham! Battered and broken she may be, but this
lady has at least kept her integrity."

For the remainder of our visit, I enjoyed myself wholeheartedly.
It wasn't until I was alone again that I reviewed my behavior and berated
myself for having drawn our conversation toward a level of such ease and
intimacy. Sir Anthony had only followed my lead. I knew very well that had I
been more reserved, had I behaved in a manner more appropriate to an
inconsolable widow, he would have respected my distance entirely....

But to think of all the little pleasures I would have missed!

The rules of polite conduct require a widow to mourn no less than
two years for her departed husband. During the first year, she must not go into
society. For a woman whose child has died in infancy, three months is
considered the proper length of time to grieve.

It seemed that I had turned the etiquette of bereavement
topsy-turvy.

As I lay in bed the night after my jaunt to the Louvre, I recalled
vividly the feeling of Sir Anthony's light, confident but unassuming hand upon
my waist; it was as if some neglected and half-forgotten inner bowstring,
pulled tauter and tauter over the years, had been lightly plucked.

Better for me had it remained in oblivion.

Already it was beginning to tighten again—but this time I could
feel every teasing, agonizing increment of tension.

It had nothing to do with Sir Anthony Camwell, of course. What was
he? A rich and idle dilettante who'd sought some brief amusement in my company.
A grave and reserved young man who seemed to consider his words too carefully
before he spoke: Even that small witticism about the
Nik
è
of
Samothrace
had sparkled in his eyes well before he'd shared the joke with
me.

I felt myself blush in the darkness. The remark of his, which had
seemed so innocent amidst the austere classicism of our surroundings, now
struck a hot little flame in my drowsy mind, and I let myself wonder for a
moment or two just how Sir Anthony Camwell would use a woman's hands and
lips....

What was I thinking! I had never thought of any man but Frederick
in so bold a way. And Sir Anthony, of all people!

I turned over, pressed my face into the pillow, and inhaled with
faint hopefulness, but Frederick's familiar scent was long gone.

The bed was too warm, that was why I couldn't sleep.

I sat up and flung off my blankets.

I couldn't keep my thoughts from straying back to my childhood as
I lay down again.

My grandmother had always worried I was too hot-blooded. "I
live in fear," she used to say, "that you'll throw yourself away on
the first man who strikes a match to your loins."

My mother had, too. Against my grandmother's wishes and to her
fury, she'd married a poor, but ambitious, man for love, and had paid the
ultimate price for that piece of folly by dying as I entered the world. My
father begged my grandmother to raise me and promised that he would send money
to support us to the extent that he was able. Soon afterward, he'd sailed for
America. He never returned. He sent money faithfully, but he never communicated
with us otherwise.

I had written to him, upon my marriage to Frederick, telling him
that I could manage without his further assistance but begging him to continue
sending money to my grandmother until Frederick and I were able to assume that responsibility.
How I'd hated having to ask even this of a man I had never known.

The only other letter I wrote him was to tell him, two years
later, that Frederick and I were at last in a position to assume responsibility
for my grandmother's financial support and to thank him again for all he had
done in the past.

After that, his checks to my grandmother stopped coming.

Now, as I tossed between the sheets I could hear my grandmother's
voice again, cautioning me to resist dangerous impulses, warning me never to do
anything in the heat of passion that might later bring me to grief.

She'd been true to her own counsel. With what businesslike
determination she had gone about her career! She had raised me, and no doubt my
mother, as well, with the same ruthless single-mindedness.

She'd distrusted joyfulness and encouraged me to do likewise. But
her advice had the opposite effect. Her tales of her youthful exploits were so
unromantic that they'd made me swear I would never follow in her footsteps. She
spoke of her lovers in terms of their wealth and station, and their gifts to
her, but never did she display any hint of tender feeling... except when she
touched upon the few months she had spent in Florence with an overly emotional
Italian count who had allegedly attempted suicide after my grandmother had
coolly deserted him for a much wealthier but considerably less noble protector.

When I'd lived with her, it seemed that her sole remaining
pleasure in life was to open the strongbox in which she kept the odds and ends
of jewelry that were to be my only legacy. She loved to display these cherished
possessions. Each had a story, the full details of which emerged only as I grew
older. The rose pearl had studded the collar of a marquis before the besotted
nobleman had it set in a gold ring for her; it was only the first of many such
rewards for her favors. The silvery mask, which had a little tearlike diamond
at the corner of each eye, had come from an aging crony of George IV; she had
worn it, but not much else, at a splendid masquerade. Dear God, what would Sir
Anthony Camwell think of me were he to know that
this
was my
inheritance!

Years later, when my grandmother was dying, she'd made me swear
that I would never bail Frederick out of debt by selling any of the pieces she
was leaving to me.

The day came, of course, long after my grandmother was gone, when
those jewels might have saved us. It was after Frederick had finally begun his
erratic recovery; he had produced and sold two paintings that were at last
worthy of his talents.

But as soon as his creditors got wind of this, they came banging
at our door more insistently than ever, and the money couldn't be stretched far
enough to satisfy them all.

That was when I told Frederick that we had to sell the jewels and
clear our debts up altogether.

"No, darling," he had said, with a weary sadness that
made my heart ache. "Your grandmother was right, you know. Those jewels
are the only insurance you'll have, if anything should happen to me. I won't
let you break your word to her. It was I who plunged us into this morass of debt
and it's my job, not yours, to pull us out of it."

So the promise wrung from me by my poor dead grandmother remained
inviolate.

In some ways I still felt as if she had never died; she'd
impressed herself so forcefully upon me, that whenever I was hesitant or
indecisive, she would charge in upon my thoughts with her worldly, unwelcome
advice.

"A baronet!" she'd have cried out, had she known of
today's adventure. "But
what
on earth were you thinking of! That
dress—why, it makes you look like a lump of charcoal! Good heavens, girl, black
can
be very effective, you know—
if
it's worn correctly."

And she'd have been taking in seams, stripping away every inch of
excess fabric, until the black clung to my figure like a blazing invitation.

"There," she'd have announced with shameless
satisfaction. "Now you look deliciously vulnerable, very much in need
of... protection. Not even your well-behaved chevalier can remain immune to
this
for long."

Of course,
I
would never stoop to such ploys. The last
thing I wanted to do was to draw to myself the kind of pointed attentions that
my grandmother had regarded as the only kind worth having. Nor was I interested
in a pointless flirtation.

A pleasant friendship, yes, but that was no reason to take in my
dresses!

I tried to steer my mind away from the channels the thoughts of my
grandmother had suggested. But it wandered among them longer than it should
have and nudged me with a truth I had been trying to dismiss.