Till James. She sobbed like a baby as he stroked her hair and cooed to her. “There, there, it’s all right,” he said, bewildered now to the point of alarm. “We’ll make love a thousand times more,” he promised, “and every single time”—he let out a snort—“will be better than
that
. That wasn’t very graceful, was it?” He laughed. “Of course, even graceless, it was good. Oh, sweet Coco, what is wrong?”
Tired, confused, at wits’ end, she mimicked him.
“What’s wrong, what’s wrong,” she repeated, then said: “What’s wrong is I want to parade you down the street, show you to my sisters and my son and every friend or enemy I have ever made. What is wrong is that I think my own wish itself is silly and girlish and hysterical. I hate myself for wanting it, but I want it all the same. And I know the private part of us is perfect and is the most important thing. But I want the public part. I want, I want….” And she cried some more.
“Aah,” he said, and petted her head. Then she cried all the harder because he said, “Oh, sweet Coco, I wish I could. I will think on it. What can we do?”
Nothing. They could do nothing.
They dressed, ascended into his carriage, and dutifully went to look at the two other houses available to rent. James wasn’t fond of either; Coco hated them both. The estate agent of the last one suggested another house for tomorrow. A larger more dignified home that “would require a servant or two.”
At which point James winked at her and patted her hand. “We’ll pay a cook and a gardener. They’ll be our audience. We’ll spoon and flirt in front of them, and they will tell the neighbors what lovebirds the Mr. and Mrs. James—let’s see—Peach, a peach of a couple, the perfect couple. Oh, that James and Nicole Peach.” He talked quickly, purposefully trying to entertain a laugh out of her. “No, Peach-Pitt,” he said with a serious air. “Hyphenated, you see, because they’re so posh. And he’s Armand, not James. Arm, for short. Mr. and Mrs. Arm Peach-Pitt.”
Coco laughed, taken aback by this unsuspected side to James’s humor—a ridiculous side.
He continued, “Who never entertain because they are too wrapped up in each other. And you be Edith. It has a nice snobbish ring. More English than Nicole. Let’s be English and proper. Edith Peach-Pitt. Dame Edith. She’s been knighted, you see. You can wear my Order of the Bath from time to time.
Just
my Order of the Bath draped over you, nothing more. And I’ll bring my oar from when I was Head of the River. Arm went to Cambridge and took a first in rowing—”
Coco chimed in. “Though he’s as dumb as a wooden spoon. Oh, yes.” She took to the game. “He was a fellow commoner, you know, one of those noble blokes who gets to eat at High Table because his family has a lot of money.”
“Right. A rowing scholar and his dame for the servants to gossip over. In fact, if the house is nice enough, let’s be a duke and duchess….”
James’s scenario went on. It became a lengthy joke as he and Coco rode along. Just as it would seem they had quieted into silence, one of them would think of something more to add.
They laughed and laughed, taking turns, revising, making up, trading around fictional pieces of themselves. They leaned, shoulder to shoulder, heads together. Coco laughed till tears ran down her cheeks.
A good distraction from really crying, this laughter James could wrench from her—he had from the first moment been so good at it, in all circumstances. And there was no doubt that she would have cried without this gift of his, for when they got near Grantchester, and she asked to be let off
where no one could see her, she was indeed stabbed again by the pity of their predicament. She would have cried indeed, but didn’t, because James’s joke, his silly, inventive game said he understood so well.
Because it said her dear, sweet, hapless—helpless—lover wanted so badly to help what couldn’t much be helped.
James thought it great fun, with Coco, to ridicule that to which he himself aspired. He would happily give up his dignity, if it would stop her from feeling bad. Moreover, he was happy to acknowledge that worldly success had its ludicrous side—not that its being ludicrous kept James from aspiring to it. Nor did he believe Coco wanted him to achieve less. Would she, he asked himself, be as interested in a coachman’s son as she was in a muckety-muck at her beloved Cambridge (where she knew all about not just gyps and bedders, but of firsts and fellow-commoners and the wood spoons given out for “lasts”)? He was a knight and scholar and soon to be more; would she want less?
He wouldn’t.
James liked the idea of the earldom that he was within days of having. Yes, it seemed vaguely comic, if not raving mad, to make him a member of the nobility, but he nonetheless liked the idea of membership. He let himself imagine what it would be like. A little estate somewhere, not too grand, green and rolling, like the land around Cambridge or the little cottage. And maybe a butler. Yes, a butler would be nice.
Actually, a butler was unnecessary and a bit silly to contemplate, when Nowles alone sufficed per
fectly. But it was slightly absurd to hang an oar with names on it on one’s bedroom wall, yet James had one of those from his Bumping Race days, and James loved it.
Meanwhile, the next day, he enjoyed the surge of power and privilege (and private humor) that rushed through him when the estate agent addressed him, “
Sir
Armand”—it had been irresistible—“do you think Dame Edith will be much longer?”
“No, no. I’m sure she’ll be right along shortly.” He tapped his hat against his leg, pacing in the gravel drive as he waited for the mysteriously delayed Coco.
He and she had agreed to meet at the larger rental house that the agent wished to show them—Coco had been adamant they never meet at her boardinghouse again. Something about not wanting to involve David. Her reason didn’t matter; whatever she wanted that James could deliver was hers for the asking.
He had a bracelet for her in his pocket. A celebration present. He couldn’t wait to give it to her, see it on her. He checked his watch. Yes, a tad late she was. Well, twenty-five minutes late, actually. A tad more than a tad. He cajoled the agent a little longer, then said finally, “You know, I think I’ll just go see what’s keeping her. She and I can meet you here at another time. When would be convenient?”
“I can wait, if you prefer.” The owners of the house, Lord and Lady Somebody-or-Other, while traveling in Greece, had decided to live there. The agent was keen to see the house rented.
“Fine,” James said. “I shouldn’t be more than
half an hour. I expect she’s just delayed at home.”
Rain broke through an overcast sky just as James pulled out into the main road. He didn’t let the sprinkle stop him, however, from racing his little vehicle over the ever wetter roadway. He probably should have pulled over and put the top up on his carriage, when it became a thorough cloudburst, but he didn’t do that either. And paid for it: the leather of his pride and joy grew blotchy, dark, and damp. When he finally stopped before Coco’s boardinghouse, water sloshed forward onto his feet in a small wave that rolled forward, then receded like an ebb tide over the floorboards.
It was a testament to how preoccupied he was that, soaking wet, he popped his umbrella before he hopped down from the carriage and picked his way through the downpour. Inside, he and his umbrella dripping puddles in the set stairway, James asked a young man in the common parlor if Mrs. Wild was in.
“Not presently. She left, let’s see—” He consulted his watch. “About two hours ago.”
Well. James stood there, perplexed; he scratched his head and wondered where to look next.
Point in fact, he decided to trot the extra mile or two back into Cambridge so he could change his clothes, get his mackintosh, and dry the carriage off. If this were all that was in his mind, though, he might have asked himself, why, then, was it that he drove right past his rooms at All Souls, where he could have found or done these things, and toward the house where Coco had once stayed?
It was just an inkling, a little jealous ping that he told himself he should put to rest, just a feeling that
took him across town, then turned him round the corner of Chesterton onto Blayney Street, Phillip’s street.
It was an intuition that, alas, paid off: for, lo, what he saw made him yank the reins. His horse whinnied in protest as wheels sloshed up rain in the street. Water slapped on the floor bottom, back and forth, then subsided into a gentle lap. All went quiet. All but for the patter of water hitting him, the seat,
ker-plunk
ing into the pool on the floor of his carriage, tapping on the stones of the street.
Everywhere rain. Everywhere but under Phillip’s front overhang, under which stood a dry-as-you-please Coco Wild, her hand raised. She was hailing a hansom that had pulled to the curb in front of the house.
As James saw her get in, he gave a violent shake to the reins in his hands, with the sudden intension of cutting the vehicle off. James’s own carriage, however, took a moment too long to gain momentum, and Coco, running late, apparently paid the driver to make up for lost time. The cab leaped forward as if banshees were after it.
James chased her tailwind all the way out of town. Had he tried, he realized, he might have caught up, might have pulled alongside. But in the end something perverse made him hold back, made him follow—where he could privately rehearse irate speeches. What was she up to? And Phillip? Why Phillip, of all people?
The rain had let up slightly by the time James followed Coco’s cab up into the driveway of the appointed house—a mere hour and ten minutes late.
The agent was just closing the front door behind himself.
As Coco was paying the driver, James descended his carriage and yelled out the gentle words, “Have something important to say to Phillip, did we? So important you had to leave me stranded, worried, chasing after you?”
Startled, she spun around as the hansom rolled off. She was left standing alone in the drive, a light rain covering her.
James continued, walking toward her, wet gravel crunching underfoot with a kind of grating satisfaction.
Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch
. “What the hell were you doing at Phillip’s? Did you decide to get engaged today after all?”
“I—I wasn’t at Phillip’s—”
“I saw you. Coco—” He paused, considered the wisdom of his words, then launched into them anyway. “Coco, I’m not accusing you of being promiscuous, but you are, well…without false restraint. I have always liked that about you. But this—you can’t slip off secretly to see Phillip without making me feel—” Livid. Ready to roar, hit someone, something. Jealous to the point of seeing goblins in his bed.
Her mouth twisted up, a sideways pucker. “You’re accusing me of—”
“I’m accusing you of nothing. I’m only saying you have to help me with my—well, it’s my problem. I’m uneasy with the fact that you’ve known a lot of secret arrangements.” How many? he might have asked, for instance. How many men could she manage at once? What was her quota, the maximum
that she’d juggled? And was she juggling now, for godssake?
Phillip. Anyone but Phillip. Phillip who took his journals and threatened to hand him over to Athers and a court of inquiry. Oh, the horrible thoughts that ran through James’s mind as rain sprinkled down on him, the drive, and Coco.
He watched the feathers of her hat bead with rain, watched her face—she had the oddest combination of warring emotions on it, both angry and crestfallen. The brim of her hat protected her eyes, her unyielding, furious eyes, while the rain made her cheeks and chin wet as if someone had thrown water into her face.
Her back had grown rigid. She stood very straight, met his regard, staring him down.
The famous—the mythically infamous—Coco Wild, in her stylish hat and her dress from Worth, the epitome of a woman with a past…a past that could rise up before him in an instant, shared as it was with his archrivals, Phillip, a bishop, not to mention an admiral, emperors, kings. God knew who else. Her lovers were legion, legend, men higher, grander, more impressive than himself. A knight and a scholar. Ha, a nothing. If her lovers weren’t worth a fortune, she wouldn’t have them. They all gave her houses—wasn’t that the gossip?
“Do you want this house?” he asked. Did he want her that much? Would he buy her if he had to? Was she worth it, if he could?
“Wh-what?” she asked. Under the brim of her hat, her eyes blinked. She hadn’t regained her balance from his previous questions. She was angry, but she was also shaken, fearful.
He stepped toe to toe with her. “The house,” he said. He jerked his head toward it. She glanced over her shoulder, then turned her back on him. She slowly rotated to see what he meant.
Like a figurine atop a music box. She walked a step toward the entrance, a petite woman in dark blue-green taffeta and black velvet. Coco Wild had always seemed to James somehow too small, too demure and well dressed to have such a roundly questionable ability to draw princes to her.
La Belle au bois dormant
. The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods. They came; they mired themselves in the thorny bramble of her reputation and her oddly potent power wielded from the bedchamber. Her forest slew some, while others fled with scrapes and scratches. Yet here she stood, looking more like a fairy than some lethal femme fatale.
She glanced back at him. “I’ll go in and look at it. And James—” The sweet, innocent face of a wronged princess held his regard over her shoulder. “I was visiting my aunt. She was very attached to Lady Dunne. She’s grieving; she couldn’t stop crying this morning.”
If it were possible for a man to shrink from six feet to an inch in a moment, to stand no taller than the toe of her shoe, James did so. He’d had no idea he’d thought these things: that his own imagination could conjure up apprehensions that were so powerfully real.
And wrong. “Oh, Coco, I’m so—” God, where to begin? What a mistake.
“Let’s go inside,” she said. She led the way.
James shoved his hand back into his wet hair and
followed. The estate agent, waiting at the door, stared at the two of them, fascinated.