"How many would have gone to Rose's wedding?"
Ah. Rose's wedding. He was right. Her departure from orthodoxy
predated him. At least she was consistent.
Somewhere at her heart she was more a democrat than those around
her.
A democrat.
When the queen
called a person the name, it was as close as she got to a curse.
At which point, Sam shifted, laying his shoulder down onto her,
the full weight of his heavy chest. At the other side, his weight lifted. She
felt her skirt raising on that side.
"Ai!" she said. "Stop!"
He let out a snort at her laughable prohibition, while her skirt
kept coming up. "So what color are your knickers" – he snorted –
"my knickers now. And how do you hold up your stockings these days? With
those little hooks that attach to a lady's corset or with little lace elastics?
It was the prettiest elastic out on the moor—"
"All right, all right! I will! I'll give them to you! Just
let me up!"
He paused, tilted his head, watching her as if to assess her
sincerity. He raised one eyebrow.
"I will indeed," she affirmed.
"Indeed?" He raised both eyebrows, suspicious of that
particular answer. His jaw set.
"Really," she told him, an Americanism; she never said
it. Till now. "So you have to let me up. I can't very well get them off
with your lying on top of me."
He squinted, distrustful. Then with a push, let air and sunlight
between them. Lydia scrambled for it immediately. She was out from under him
before he was even to his feet.
She stood up on wobbly legs, putting both her hands to her head.
Oh, her hair – and her hat was missing. She looked around, dusting her skirts.
She had grass all over her. "Have you seen my hat?" When he didn't
answer, "And my bow? What became of my bow?" She picked up her
quiver. The leather was off-square; she pushed at it, fixing it. The feathers
of the three arrows still in it were bent; there was no fixing those.
Sam walked over, leaning his long arm down, and picked up her hat,
then fetched her bow. As he brought them back, he said, "You're good. The
best I've ever seen."
She blurted, "I'm going to the Grand National. I'm going to
win." It was a relief to talk about something else. "Last year, I
came in fifth, a contender. This year, I'm better." She knew she was. And
she didn't just want to win: "This year, if the wind's right, I'll set
records."
"A high-scoring day," he said and looked at her.
"Yes." She ventured a smile. Yes. She had the skill.
Though some things could cancel it out.
She frowned suddenly at Sam, a perplexed moment. She remembered
her first qualifying meet for the Grand National, the one before the Scorton.
It had been this past July. Her menses had come four days early, making the
meeting into an ordeal. Her flow was irregular, hard to predict, but when it
came it was profuse. In July, she'd barely made the cut, scoring just what she
needed to remain on the register, then getting Clive to cart her home.
That had been two weeks before Rose's wedding – she furrowed her
brow deeply, pondered a moment – almost five weeks ago. A Saturday. She counted
backward to the exact day. Four weeks and five days. Lydia stared hard at Sam –
he stood there holding her bow and hat – thinking. If her flow came every
twenty-eight days, which it didn't, she was five days late.
She asked, "You know that thing you did? You know, where you,
um – pulled out? It always works, doesn't it?"
"When we made love on the moor?"
"Yes."
"Withdrawal?"
"Is that what it's called?"
"Or coitus intereruptus. And, yes, it works. Usually.
Why?" He contemplated her narrowly, though he could simply have been
looking into the sun.
She shook her head, turning. "Nothing."
"You're not late, are you?"
"No, I'm fine."
This won her another long look, puzzlement, then a nod. Good.
She shook her head. No, she wasn't late. Well, she was, but she
was often untimely. Her menses would come. She'd been upset. Too much
excitement had thrown it off. "May I have my hat, please?"
"May I have my knickers, please?"
She blinked and let out a little breathy laugh. "You, ah –
you aren't really going to make me, are you?"
"Yes."
Another breath escaped,
pffah
.
She encouraged sanity. "You're joking." She smiled, inviting him to
smile, too, to let it go.
His gaze held fast. "I'm not joking."
She thought perhaps if she just walked away—
She tried it, but he caught her arm.
Such a look, so quintessentially Sam. He looked down at her from
his tall, broad-shouldered height as if all his discontent with the world, with
himself, her, and the many imperfections of existence, had condensed into this
moment: a brooding glare – it was his face's most natural expression. It set
people back; it made him seem fiercer than he was.
He told her, "Liddy, I really do want the token of my
win."
"I'll give you—" Yes, a sacrifice. "All right, my
hat."
He snorted. "I want what we agreed."
"I never agreed."
"You did. If not before, just now on the ground."
"Under coercion," she said and frowned. "Besides,
my, um—" She licked her lips, lubrication. She couldn't even say
knickers
to his face. "They're too
intimate."
He scowled blackly then drew in a huff, one of admission; he
couldn't deny it.
She said quickly, "A stocking. I'll give you a
stocking."
He frowned deeper, a glower as dark as a Dartmoor night. When he
didn't object outright, she quickly turned, drawing up, wadding, the hems of
her skirts to her garter as she bent out of his line of vision. She rolled her
stocking down, shaking off her slipper as she did, then yanked the stocking off
her bare toe. As she shoved her foot bare back into her shoe, she swiveled
around to him, holding the stocking.
"Here," she said, trying to smile graciously. "Your
win."
"You're a lot like your fellow countrymen. I say what I want,
what I'm entitled to. You say no. Finally, you grudgingly give me a tenth of
what I ask for, then think you can get up and go."
She could see where Sam's moodiness might unnerve some people,
because his expression at the moment provoked anxiety even in a woman who knew
him to be a fairly nice human being.
Then he almost didn't even get his "tenth."
They both jumped to hear a voice call from within the copse of
trees. "Lydia!"
She was jamming the stocking into the first available hiding
place, the arrow quiver, when the stocking was summarily yanked out of her
fingers. For one frightening moment, she wasn't sure who had it. Clive had
trotted from between two rather near trees.
"Ah, there you are," he said. "I couldn't see you,
though Father told me you were out here. He wants you upstairs in his study,
posthaste."
Sam's hand, she noticed, was in his pocket. Her stocking had to be
in there too. She hoped. Clive looked innocent.
More crossly than she'd intended, she asked him, "Why? Father
knows I'm busy out here shooting."
Her brother blinked as Sam's presence registered – who it was she
stood beside. He looked from her to Sam to her again, as if to say, Busy? You
don't look busy, not with shooting at least. "Hello, Mr. Cody," he
said. "I didn't realize you were out here." To Lydia, "Father
didn't say why he wanted you. A boatload of telegrams has arrived though –
someone in London has kept the telegraph office busy in Crawthorne, I must say.
Perhaps it has something to do with those."
There were a strained few seconds, neither Sam nor Lydia
recovering themselves quick enough.
At first, Clive looked at them, frowning from one to the other.
"Is something wrong?"
"I beat her," Sam muttered.
"What?" Her brother's long face transformed with a
spreading smile. With wonder, he started to say, "You beat Lydia at—"
"He didn't," she said grimly. "I gave him a huge
handicap. I outshot him."
Clive began to laugh. "I can't believe it! You let him beat
you! What did he win?"
Even Sam looked taken aback by the question. Lydia, of course, was
undone. "Nothing," she told him, too loudly. "Nothing at
all." She grabbed her hat from Sam, took her bow, then had to step
forward: She used her skirts to hide her finger tabs and arm protector where
they lay on the ground. She stood over them.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Clive contradicted, very amused now.
"I know you, Lydia. You've never taken me or any of my friends for less
than twenty quid." To Sam, he asked, "Did she give you whites?"
"Whites and blacks."
"Whoo!" He whistled.
She led the way toward the trees at a march.
Her brother fell in beside her on one side, saying, "You must
have been very confident, Lyd." Clive, a head taller than she, looked
directly over her at Sam, who had fallen in step at her other side. "So
what did you bet, Mr. Cody?"
Sam glanced at him, his own hands in his pockets as they walked
three abreast into the small woods. "Nothing," he said. "Just as
she said."
Clive looked sideways at them both, leafy shade playing over his
amused expression. He shook his head, grinning. "Not bloody likely. My
sister is a greedy thing. You bet a lot, something good, and Lydia matched it –
and lost!" He twisted his mouth – he thought he was teasing with his hint
of lewd speculation. "What, hmm?"
Lydia wanted to kill him; she'd strangle him in his sleep tonight.
"Shut up," she said. As they trudged up out of the trees and into the
back gardens, she threw him a murderous glare.
Which only made Clive's eyes dance, then he broke out into peals
of laughter.
Had he realized how truly compromised she was, he would never have
teased in this vein. But so long as he thought her upright and chaste – it was
beyond his imagination that his sister should be anything but virginal – she
was in for it. She wished she'd told him. She wished he knew. She wished he
could be on her side – though she couldn't imagine how to say enough, without
incriminating herself horribly, to get him there.
So she walked back to the house, her brother on one side of her,
ribbing her and Sam mercilessly.
Sam on her other, as they came up out of the trees into the back
gardens, actually had the nerve to murmur under his breath, "We're not
finished, Lid."
She threw him a quick frown askance. His expression still wanted
to argue. Oh, grand. Caught between the two, a clown and a madman.
She looked from one to the other, right, then left. Then straight
ahead as they walked into the rose garden toward the back parlor door, where
she knew an odd, uncomfortable flutter in her chest. For a dozen, rapid
heartbeats, she felt frantic.
19
There
is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which
there is love, but on one side only.
An Ideal Husband
, 1895
L
iddy
all but
slammed the door on Sam as he came in behind her. He caught it – it impacted
the heel of his hand with a loud smack – still thinking he could get her alone,
follow her, speak to her, get some sort of satisfaction.
He touched her arm. She belted him, elbow to the solar plexus.
"Oof."
Half a dozen people witnessed the blow. Boddington, Miss
Pinkerton, another young woman, and two other men, all sitting in the parlor –
everyone but Clive, who was behind Sam and missed the action.
"Good Lord, did you see that?" Boddington proceeded to
describe the action for Clive and anyone else who would listen.
Clive chimed in, "Ah, getting along well, I see." He
laughed. "He beat her on the target range—"
Liddy, halfway to the door, whirled, facing them all in the middle
of the room. "He didn't!" To Sam, she said for the third or fourth
time now, "I outshot you."
"She gave me a handicap. I beat her, and she won't own
up."
Though of course it wasn't the archery match he wanted her to
acknowledge. It was the other, after the match in the shade: the fact that she
gave him a "handicap" there, let him catch her, pin her to the
ground: wanted him to, liked it.
Admit your attraction, give in to me. Love me, Lydia.
She doesn't want you.
The thought
came from nowhere and made him so low, it stopped him in his tracks. Lower than
low, his spirits in the mud, Sam let himself drop into a chair beside Clive,
spraddle-legged, rancor and unhappiness at the surface of him in a way he
couldn't remember in a long time. Sad and angry and confused. He let Liddy go,
watching her flounce out of the room.
She doesn't want you
.
You aren't good enough. Stop trying.
Clive was asking something about the Isthmus of Panama, something
about the engineering feat of a possible canal there, but Sam couldn't even say
exactly what his question was. "Mm," he answered.
He sat there, his hand in his pocket, fingering a black silk
stocking exactly like the one that, when he'd first seen it on the moor, had
made his head spin. He crushed it now in his fist out of view, knowing its
soft, springy texture, its warmth, the faint dampness of it still from her
skin. Clive talked. Sam pretended interest, attention. While the dispiriting,
hateful refrain echoed through him:
She
doesn't want you, she won't have you.
*
Knocking
on her father's study door, Lydia realized that, at the top of the house,
facing north, if anyone could see out onto the target range, it should be he
from here. Oh, splendid.
Alas, when she came in, he had his back to her: Jeremy
Bedford-Browne was looking out the high, diamond-mullioned window behind his
desk onto the estate's rear gardens and the very cluster of trees that had
hidden, she hoped, herself and Sam.
"You sent for me?"
He turned, his hands behind his back. "I sent Clive after you
when I realized Mr. Cody was, ah – negotiating something out there with you.
What, Lydia?"
"Um, nothing." She had to fight an urge to spill
everything.
Oh, let me tell you. I was
alone out there for four days with this man who upsets me … he excites me. Sit
down. I need advice from someone who cares…
What a tirade was inside her.
Yet she stood quietly.
Stoic, the same as ever, her father came forward, glancing down at
his desk. On the desk's surface lay random squares of yellow paper, telegrams,
a disorganized slew of them – among discarded cigar trimmings, a pair of
eyeglasses, a crumpled wad of paper, and last month's page off a small
calendar. So like her father. Though his dogs and horses were perfectly
exercised and fed, well-bred, fairly everything else was left to an as-it-came,
need-be basis. Her mother kept the desk, his study, the house organized. When
the viscountess left, everything slowly went to pieces until her return, when
she would resurrect it all again.
"What are those?" she asked, nodding at the telegrams.
He made a helpless gesture. "A dozen wires from London."
He lifted his brow, relentless. "Tell me what you know of Samuel
Cody."
Out of the blue came the memory,
He reads Buffalo Bill novels really well
. But she said, "Not
much," then thought to add a single bit, a good part. "He's well
off."
"My dear" – he indicated the telegrams – "he could
pay off the national debt and buy the navy in the bargain. Do you know who
Gwynevere Pieters is?"
"The American heiress?" Lydia had met her just yesterday
afternoon before the engagement dinner. Very pretty, particularly feminine,
very rich. Word had it that mutual friends, the Duke and Duchess of Garmary,
intended to bring her out this season. Ho hum, Lydia had thought, another
American girl out to marry an English lord.
"He jilted her a month ago. Did you know that?"
She shook her head, frowning, then nodded again, confused.
"I, um, didn't know whom— But, yes, I knew he'd missed his wedding."
"Her father's a senator. He, she, her family were here last
night. That must have been damn uncomfortable. I had no idea. But did it stop
Mr. Cody? No. He even badgered the man after dinner. The fellow is so
bold." He took a quick breath, then said, "Lydia, he went outside
after you today. You know him. How?"
"Um—" A dozen stories passed through her mind; invention
was there. Then she surprised – and frightened – herself. Out came the truth.
"The man on the moor, it was Sam."
Her father's eyebrows rose up in surprise – no doubt as much for
her accidental use of Sam's given name as for anything else – then drew down
again quickly, a fierce, single line of disapproval. "You and Rose were
out four days alone with this – this jilting lothario – this obnoxious,
belligerent—"
"Rose wasn't with us." Sam was right. Her
"proper" life was, had been, and would continue to be hypocritical
unless she herself changed it.
Honest
with the people I love.
She said, "I went to her wedding. She was on
her honeymoon. I was on my way to Meredith's when the coach crashed. Mr. Cody
was on it. He saved my life."
Brave
and truthful
. Buffalo Bill would have been proud of her – though her knees
shook.
Her father's mouth opened. It worked a moment with no words coming
out as he stood there trying to absorb what she'd said. He glanced down at the
telegrams, then picked one up. "He wrote a book," he said.
Lydia blinked, then asked, "Really?" She remembered
Sam's telling her of the one his father had put down the latrine.
"Yes, when he was at Harvard."
"Harvard?"
"It's a fairly good American school – mostly rich society
boys from the Northeast who pay their way in, but still good. I can't imagine
his fitting in."
No, neither could she. "How did he get there?"
"I'm not sure. His mother's side is from Boston, it
seems." Her father continued, "Mr. Cody is either the humblest man I
know. Or" –
more likely
, her
father's tone said – "the biggest, most devious pretender alive."
She offered, "He can hit a rabbit at fifty yards with a
stone," adding, "in near-darkness."
"So could the devil." Her father's face remained stern.
He shuffled through telegrams. "He's not a good risk, Lydia. He's left
women standing at the altar of three weddings." He looked at another wire,
then tossed it toward her. "His family is a disaster: His father was a
known outlaw."
"And a sheriff and a rancher."
A good risk? Anything could happen. In the end even good old
Boddington could leave her, divorce her, or simply treat her so badly she'd
wish he would. Risk? Her father wanted her to marry safety? She no longer
believed in it – not since bogs and cotton-wool fogs and drunken coach drivers.
The memory made something in her, that strength from the moor rise up. A warm
vein-dilating surge. It felt good. And dangerous. Full of peril in the real
world where bravery, honesty, even strength were not always rewarded.
Her father scowled. "He wants to overturn a treaty my father
helped write." Having said this, he muttered down to papers that he sorted
blindly, "Worse than a Liberal."
It occurred to her: "Where did you get those telegrams? Who
are they from?"
"One from a friend in Washington. The rest from your
mother."
"Mother? How? Why?"
"Because we didn't know him, and a lot seems suddenly to be
riding on him. And, too, last night she saw – more accurately than I realized,
the perceptive woman – that, besides my own business with him, he is interested
in you."
"You and mother?" Lydia repeated, bewildered. It was as
if her parents were ganging up on her.
He nodded. "She's on her way."
"On her way here? She just left."
"Yes. She made London by noon. The embassy knows him there.
She visited Whitehall, then his" – he looked down – "his grandmother and
aunt. Your mother found the information we wanted, then wired it to me."
When Lydia could only stare, nonplussed, he angled his head, frowning at her.
"We are good business partners, your mother and I. We have been,
consistently, for twenty-eight years. Don't underestimate the value of
that."
"Do you love her?" she found herself asking.
Here father's eyes shifted to a point just beyond her shoulder.
For a moment, he stared into space. Then he answered the question backward.
"She doesn't love me, Lydia."
*
By
the end of the day, if Sam walked into a room where Lydia was already present,
or vice versa, someone might say, "Oo-ooh," and even bait them a
little. They became, in a day, famously at odds. He tormented her obliquely
about owing him something. She retaliated with stories of the cowpoke from the
moor, letting whoever was in their company do the rest. Her friends and
relations were keen to make fun, while only she knew the "cowpoke"
was sitting there.
It served him right,
she thought.
Cowpoke, indeed
.
Gwynevere Pieters. The name sat sourly in Lydia's mind whenever
she happened to glance at her lover from the moor. A rich debutante. That
wasn't precisely the impression she'd gotten of the Gwyn whom Sam had
described. Served him right.
Lydia was ruthless. She brought up again the red union suit and
invented stories of a drunken fellow walking around in it. She used the truth:
We walked in circles, while he drank the
better part of two bottles of gin
. No one understood the point as she did,
but everyone was game. Oh, the fun they all had. With Sam and Lydia parrying
back and forth like children smacking at each other.
"I have never seen two people develop such instant
antipathy," Boddington observed, pointing out, laughing, how well he and Lydia
got on. "They do nothing but fight."
Clive added, "We ought to send her in to negotiate with you,
Cody.
She
unsettles you."
While Lydia justified her meanness to him by saying, Sam of all
people should realize she was making the moor story up, exaggerating. The fool
on the Dartmoor was fantasy, not at all how he had been. It shouldn't bother
him. Or only a little. She was just giving him a pinch.
Yet, clearly, her teasing affected him beyond that. She watched
him grow more and more upset, till he finally stood to his feet. It was a kind
of sad triumph to realize he could barely contain himself. He was distraught.
Foolish Sam, undone by stories.
When he left, though, taking a parting shot – he called her a
shrew who could drive any man to drink – Lydia grew quiet. She bit her lip,
looked down, and blushed. "What are you so goshdamn afraid of?" he
murmured as he passed her.
What was she afraid of? That desire should overtake her again? No,
that was ridiculous – mostly because it already had. She had a squirming
awareness of her attraction to Samuel J. Cody.
No, she was afraid of her own will, that force in her that had
been so wonderful and strong on the moor: She was afraid she would find a way
to act on her desire. And that, by doing so, in the context of her real life,
she would accidentally destroy it. The fabric of her existence here in
Yorkshire and London, her social standing, her future, seemed fragile by
comparison to her existence on the moor – not held together with as much …
vitality, vigor … desire.
Her heart's desire: She feared that she would reach for it.
She deserved Sam's animosity, she decided. Yes, a shrew. He kept
her secrets. In fact, he ate a lot of crow to do it. While she used his
chivalry to hurt him – she didn't understand how exactly, nor had she intended
to hurt him to the degree she seemed to, but she knew she had done it –
willfully – and was ashamed.
*
Indeed,
the next morning her mother arrived. She brought more papers, she and Lydia's
father calling Lydia once more into the upstairs study.