She was vulnerable, fragile, yet afraid to be soft.
Who’d said no once and now was being quite emphatic about it. Her eyes said no. Her pink, dumpling-soft mouth had become a tight, compressed line that said no. No.
So, mature man that he was, he slapped his hat onto his head, nodding curtly. “Right,” he said. Ruddy hell, he thought. He twisted the doorknob, then—annoyed with her and himself both—he added, “My dear Mrs. Wild.” He said in a rush of earnestness, “If you ever do need a friend, I hope you will call on me.”
It was, of course, most unlikely that she would call on a masher for any reason.
James swung the door wide, half-blinded by direct sunlight, but stepped through anyway, clapping the door shut with strength. His exit quaked the doorframe. The brass mail slot bounced, then clattered, a rickety rhythm that followed him down the steps onto her front walk and—or seemed to, at least—out her brambly overgrown gate.
Coco stood inside leaning back against her front door, dismayed, trying to regain her balance. All right, she shouldn’t have played with him. She shouldn’t have made a game of watching his sweet-innocent expression when she’d lit his cigar or enjoyed the fun of muttering a dirty word in his face. He had proven his point: a little innocence and curiosity could be dangerous. She had always known it. What a fool to dally with the notion now. At her age. A good thing she had gotten rid of him. What a relief he was gone.
Then why was she standing here against the door, fighting the urge to open it and run after her wounded young swain, to offer
him
an apology? An apology for being reasonable? Someone had to be. For being kissed like a tart? Which he had done rather nicely, if she were honest. Coco realized her hand remained over her mouth, touching where his lips had been.
My goodness, she thought, when had a man ever kissed her like that? Then she laughed at herself. It would be a longer time still before one did so again. (Though wasn’t that interesting? She’d enjoyed it. The feel of it. The way he’d done it. The imagination and resolve behind it.) In any regard, the last
person on earth who needed her apologies or reassurance was Sir James Stoker. He had the assurance of the world that he was an extraordinary young man. Let it be. Let him go.
“
Signora?
”
Lucia, her maid. She wanted to know, Would the beautiful young Englishman be back again soon?
Coco heaved herself off the door, frowning. “No, he won’t be back at all.” She walked down the foyer and into the parlor. “And he’s not that beautiful. His feet are big. Did you see the size of his shoes?”
From the tea table, Coco picked up her mail, tapping it together distractedly, while behind her Lucia babbled in Italian about Dr. Stoker: his clothes, his manners, his carriage, which apparently had wheels that were red-rimmed and brass-spoked.
“In English,” Coco said finally. She didn’t like the tone of her own voice, but couldn’t seem to make it otherwise. She added, trying to make her rebuke into something logical, “You must use English if you intend to learn it.”
The girl tried. As she clattered tea items onto the tray, she said, “You look. Heese—cahr-rich—eese, how you say
…elegante, vivace
?” His carriage was stylish and jaunty.
Coco took the tray out of the girl’s hands. “I’ll get the rest. You go upstairs and finish with the trunks we’re sending to San Remo.”
Lucia stood, her hands out, open; confused. “
Prego?
”
“Upstairs. Go upstairs.” In Italian, Coco told her, “Go pack the trunks.”
Lucia’s face took on a plaintive expression. “I only say,” she explained, “he eese nice. A gentleman.”
Coco lost patience. “For goodnessake, Lucia: a girl like you might ride in that jaunty carriage of his once or twice, or ride under him, if he can get past the guilt, but English gentleman don’t take up with women of the serving class, or not seriously, at least. Stop being such a ninny, will you?”
Lucia frowned, hurt. “Me? No, no, not me. I think of you,
signora
. He like
you
.” Her expression was one of offended good intentions.
Coco stared at her for a moment. Then, deflated, she said gently, “Nor me, Lucia. I am no different.” She sighed, offering the tray back. “Here. Go on. Take this into the kitchen.” She collapsed onto the edge of the sofa, then flopped back, rubbing her forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said to Lucia. “I’m annoyed with myself. And with life.”
She felt awful. Drained. The party last night had taken more of a toll than she’d imagined. In addition, her tooth had begun to hurt.
“No matter,
signora
. I take this, too?”
“What?” Lucia was pointing to James Stoker’s teacup. “Yes. Then I can get the rest. Just take the tray into the scullery. I’ll meet you upstairs in a bit.”
Lucia disappeared with the tea tray. It took a moment for Coco to mobilize herself. But eventually she stood, picking up the cigar dish containing James Stoker’s unfinished cigar.
Looking at it, she smiled wryly. She doubted that the “beautiful young Englishman” had ever propositioned a woman before. He was bad at it. He
embarrassed himself easily. Yet bold—Lord, he was that. Bold and artless. What a combination. What a contradiction James Stoker was to her.
Innocent yet, she was sure, a quick study. He’d get better at rolling out inviting propositions. He was sweet. Gallant. Lucia was right, a gentleman. Lancelot dying to embrace the illicit, even though he didn’t understand how to do it yet. Or, God knew, the consequences.
It was he she wanted to warn, not Lucia. Yet James Stoker, purveyor of cloves and other offers of help, had already denied he was heroic in the first place. She would not have known where to begin.
Moreover, he had the power to make kindness and generosity of spirit seem normal, to make romantic altruism plausible.
With a soft snort, Coco walked over and dumped the contents of the cigar dish into the empty rose box on the table under the mirror. Then, taking the box, she scraped dropped leaves and snipped stems into it.
Indeed, once she herself had indulged in romantic fantasies. She had dreamed things like, If I were the daughter of a great house—instead of the daughter of a papermill worker…. Then Sir James Stoker would have been exactly the sort of gentleman she’d have wanted to call on her. She’d have been in thrall to his fine manners, intelligence, and enthusiasm. Oh, these things—so
vivace
, indeed—they radiated from him like heat from the sun. While an implicit integrity in his gold-brown eyes made a person want to meet his gaze and believe every word he said.
Coco groaned inwardly. He
did
mean every word
he said, and that was the pity of it. She could have shaken him. But she only swept the last bits of flowers and leaves off the table, then picked up the card that had come with the roses, looking at it again. It was unsigned, though she had known the handwriting immediately even though she hadn’t seen it in more than a dozen years. She had known it in only the slant of the letters in one repeated word:
Sorry, sorry, sorry
.
She crumpled the card and tossed it into the rest of the debris, shaking her head. Yes, she had been foolish once. But no longer.
That evening James was packing when a telegram arrived from Phillip Dunne, already in Cambridge. James opened the telegram, then had to sit down and read it twice:
DID NOT WANT TO MENTION TILL WAS CERTAIN STOP YOUR NAME TO GO ONTO HONORS LIST FOR JUNE STOP SUBMITTED IT THOUGH REAL CREDIT GOES TO YOUR MAGNIFICENT ACHIEVEMENTS STOP AM SURE HER MAJESTY WILL BE MOST GENEROUS STOP A FINE FINE THING CONGRATULATIONS STOP PHILLIP
James stared at the words, purely shocked. The Honors List was the list of suggested names given to the Queen by various counselors and authorities, the list from which, twice a year, at New Year and her birthday, she selected and bestowed hereditary titles.
As large as his plans were for himself, James’s
aspirations had never included seeing his name on this list.
What business did he have with land holdings or a title of nobility? He had no experience in running an estate. He had little experience in the official protocol of rank—except near the bottom, of course, which wasn’t very demanding.
His only formal experience with
noblesse
was actually with the Queen. Since his return, he had been commanded into Her Majesty’s presence twice, on the two occasions this month when she had been in brief residence at Buckingham Palace. They’d been private audiences. He still didn’t know what to make of the fact of having spent two strange afternoons, just himself and the Queen of England, with her asking questions, then listening raptly as he’d recited his exploits.
What a stunning notion to leap from here to becoming part of English nobility. How cynical the leap made him. He did not feel he had accomplished anything yet in life that could be termed a “magnificent achievement.” What did his name on the Honors List mean? Other than that a man who brought back a lot of exotic riches from far away—and who possibly knew where there was more of the same to be found—appealed very strongly to Her Majesty’s sense of manly daring?
London
31 March 1876
My dearest David
,
I wish you could see the bouquet of flowers I am looking at right now. It seems a shame that I must give them away or let them fade, but my tickets are in order: I am on the train to you tomorrow. If only these extraordinary flowers would travel. You would adore them. Big, fat alba Célestes. Tiny, fragrant noisettes. Bracts of simple musk roses. The cultivated and wild together. It is a raucous bouquet, as if from a vast, sunny garden. With tulips, violets, snapdragons intermingled with spikes of the prettiest little orchids, all with curling ferns and some lush green, tiny-leafed stuff I can’t even name
.
I thought perhaps if I described all these to you, then you might enjoy them a little before I deposit them with the cook who is taking them to her daughter—never to be seen again by the likes of us, my dear. Anyway, it is a once-and-never-again armload of flowers. I have never seen the match for it
.
They arrived today from that fellow James Stoker (who himself arrived on my doorstep yesterday). Yes, the one from the dentist’s parlor whom you think you know from Cambridge. Though I wonder if you are correct, since your Dr. Stoker is a don, and this man seems rather young for such a learned position. Tall, blondish hair? Unfashionably tan still from his travels (a much healthier color, in my opinion, than that of most Englishmen)? Does this sound like the gentleman you met three weeks ago?
I must say, I am curious about him. He strikes me as a little flashy for a scholar, while he seems too aboveboard for the political intrigue of a successful academician. How is it that he is both? He seems forthright, generous, kind, yet an image of him sitting in my front parlor yesterday stays with me: his arms along the back of my sofa, a clamped-down bite on one of Bertie’s cigars, his lips pulled back, smoke roiling from between his teeth. He looked like a bloody czar
.
Look how I ramble! You say I keep to my own council too much, but, look, I am a regular magpie with you. I took the contract to Mr. Pease, by the way, signed and sealed. He is toying with the idea of “doing a Brothers Grimm” on the fairy tale, that is to say, cutting the last half off. No Ogress Queen. No child-eating. A shame. I could do such a nice, horrific job on these. But, ah, well. I shall spin my “curlicues” into a pretty sleeping princess and a spiraling rococco woods. I shall make the forest fierce. It will all but swallow the handsome prince who comes along and, with a kiss, gives Beauty’s life meaning again
.
Ha. What a foolish tale this is at heart, don’t you think? I say, wake up there, Beauty. Who better to make your life count than yourself?
And no, I am not too independent. Not too content, not too peaceful. Not, not, not complacently withdrawn from life. I’ve had my parties, darling. I no longer find swarms of people as amusing as I once did. Just give me a few friends—I hear from Marie-Louise and Denise from time to time. Lucia is with me; she plays a vicious game of cribbage. Oh, and I saw Margaret Drexel the other night, who is ill; I fear for her. Other than this, though, well, Jay does a first-rate job with my accounts; he does far more than he should for me. And Nigel, ever so carefully, makes certain that I’m all right. Always good when you have a bishop saying masses for your soul. Life is fine
.
Besides, I have your regular letters, which are worth the world to me. And our occasional visit. Hurray! I can’t wait to see you and hear more about the Battle of the Bees as well as your other chemical dilemmas. I miss your shining face. Thank you for reassuring me that Cambridge is deserted between terms. I would come anyway, though; now and then I simply must. Still, it is best that even you are not seen with me too much, my sweet dear. Alas, all the more so in England, it seems. Take care, my darling. Remember to be kind to yourself. I embrace you, my love, my sweet cabbage in cream
.