The Loves of Leopold Singer (10 page)

He was dressed as usual without flaw and at first glance seemed slight, even effeminate. As he walked, all trace of the feminine vanished. His vitality radiated as if he were a blessed thing descended from some charmed dynasty of ancient legend. In motion, he reeked of male power; many pairs of female eyes marked his path. He attracted silly girls as naturally as he alarmed steady women, despite their better judgment, and he made it a point of honor never to insult any lady who would receive him into her gentle grace.

The bride was one who had received him with some regularity, and as he sat down beside her she seemed not to have lost the inclination. He didn’t resent his duty to play host with his aunt, and he liked the duke, his benefactor, very much. But after Mrs. Carleson, he found Delia uninteresting.

“Sir Carey, why so serious a face?” The duchess placed her hand on his thigh. “Don’t worry. I’ll always want you to call me D.”

“Another man enjoys that honor now, your grace.” He ignored her touch and lifted his glass. “Your happiness.”

Mrs. Carleson was silent beside her husband. She appeared serene enough beside him, but Sir Carey thought she was not. In fact, he was certain Mrs. Carleson was miserable in her marriage. Why had he gone on so much about the past, about events which only made him unhappy? Even miserable Mrs. Carleson must be happier than he. He made a show of enjoying the wine, though it was a gift from the infernal Singers, while Delia chatted on about people he did not know and had no desire to know.

Devilliers left the table to speak with the Carlesons, and Mrs. Carleson’s face softened. Several complete and contiguous sentences seemed to come out of her, though Sir Carey could hear none of it. Delia’s hand glided further up his thigh. She would find her way back to his bed once she had spawned an heir for Gohrum, but it didn’t signify. She cared for Sir Carey about as much as he did for her.

Leopold didn’t forget Susan Gray. She’d awakened him to love’s sweetness. But his eagerness now was for Marta Schonreden, and as soon as it was proper he went to see her brother. He had to have Marta for his wife, or he would rather follow his parents to his own grave.

He felt no great longing for Marta. He didn’t swoon or sigh when he thought of her. He fancied himself no Dante amazed by his Beatrice. His need was more profound, like his need for water or air. He didn’t long for water or air. He simply had to have them in order to live.

She had captured his fancy years ago, one day on the street when he’d stopped some boys fighting. What man could miss such beauty? Then Susan Gray had taught him what a woman was, and he’d known immediately that he must be with Marta Schonreden. She wasn’t to be wished for; she was to live with or to die without.

He found her in the parlor arranging winter greenery on a table. Their worlds had changed in the same way, the great Rocks of their lives crumbled and gone forever. But his loss had had the opposite effect to hers. He now had autonomy and means, the two necessary underpinnings of real freedom.

“Miss Schonreden, your brother has given me permission to speak to you.”

“Yes?” Her throat flushed a deep pink.

“Is something the matter?”

“No.” She indicated he should sit. “Just for a moment, you reminded me of von Beethoven.”

“You have seen the composer?” He ignored the chair she’d gestured toward and sat beside her on the sofa.

“When I was in Vienna with my aunt and uncle. He is a horrid man.”

Leopold laughed. “How so?”

“I was with a group of students at a salon to hear him play. He pinched my chin and stole a kiss in front of everyone.”

“What insolence. How horrible for you.”

“Yes, it was.” She lifted her lovely eyelashes and seemed pleased by his understanding. “Later, my teacher commended my tolerance. In truth I felt more violated by that sentiment than I had by the kiss.”

“Your beauty, I think, stuns a man’s reason.”

“Mm?” She blushed again.

He brought her fingers to his lips. “And do you think I am a horrid man, like Beethoven?”

“Oh.”
 

“Miss Schonreden. Marta. I have thought of you often this last year with much affection. With more than affection. What I mean to say is, would you to do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”

“You are too kind.”

“I come into my majority in May, when I will have full authority over my estate.” He recited the speech he’d composed in his head on the road from Salzburg. “If you grant me the honor, I’d like to be married then. You will be well cared for.”

Just barely, she pulled her fingers away from his kisses. A less perceptive man wouldn’t notice, but Leopold felt a momentary physical rejection like an unexpected blow. Then she yielded and the dark instant passed.

“You will be loved, Marta. You are loved.” All was well. He felt her acquiesce into the Marta he knew, lovely, compliant, and his perfect complement.

Marta could barely believe this was happening. Prospects are funny things, Vati had said, and so they were. Hers had improved because he had looked out for them. Because he’d sent her to Vienna, she’d always know he had loved her though Fate had left her to Wolfram’s negligent care.

Now she again felt revived by Leopold Singer’s vital force. She wanted to touch his cheek, to rest her head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. With her father’s death had come the great shock of her utter powerlessness. Dependent on her brother’s good will, she faced a sobering and self-diminishing reality. In that world, no one was her champion. A new kind of necessity colored her feelings. As much as she wanted Leopold Singer, she needed him more.
      

She had never spoken of Beethoven’s kiss, yet it was easy to tell him about it. He was sympathetic, where Wolfram would have ridiculed her. She remembered Oktav’s kiss, and how she had imagined Leopold in his place. She could still imagine it. She wanted Leopold’s kiss. She wanted him for her husband and for her lover.

And he was here, making love to her, kissing her fingers. The thrill of his touch surged through her body. For the mere fraction of a moment she’d thought,
maybe I am as bad as Eve after all
. In that instant of self-doubt, a chasm had opened between them, and it was terrifying.

“I will marry you,” she said. He brought her into his strength and kissed her full on the mouth. The chasm closed. She did not feel evil. The world felt exactly right.

The following May, Gabrielle helped Marta put on the veil they had made together. It was Gabby’s design and more a mantilla than a veil, the color of light brown eggshells, each crocheted star centered with pastel rosettes in green, pink, and blue. It cascaded over Marta’s blue silk wedding dress, made by a dressmaker in Salzburg at Leopold’s expense. He had guessed rightly that Wolfram would not pay for such a thing.

“God’s grace,” Gabby said. “You look like a Spanish queen!”

The image in the glass offered proof. Marta really was going to be married today. The lacy veil against her dark hair did make her seem exotic. Wolfram could not begrudge the luxury of her dress because her husband-to-be had ordered it. Her mother’s voice could not intrude on her beauty because she was giving it as an offering to her bridegroom.

Her eyes were green with anticipation. Other girls seemed to lose something of their selves when they married. Even dear Gabrielle was not quite as lively as before she became Mrs. Wolfram Schonreden. But in marriage, Marta anticipated a new freedom. She would no longer be a father’s daughter or a brother’s ward.

She would be Leopold Singer’s wife. She would keep her own house and entertain her husband’s friends. Wolfie and Gabby would come to dinner on Sundays. Soon her children would join Gabby’s children in studies and games. The dress and mantilla would go into a cedar chest until the day of her daughter’s wedding.

“Are you ready, sister?” Wolfram stood in the doorway beaming with unlikely good cheer, cleaned up and dressed in their father’s best suit.

“Wolfram, you are so handsome!” She linked arms with him, emerged from the house of her childhood forever and rode to the plain and unmysterious Lutheran church to be transformed into a new person.

In celebration of the marriage, the servants had the full day off. When Leopold brought Marta home from the boisterous reception Wolfram hosted, the house was silent. In her new room, she began to detach the mantilla.

“Let me help you.” He set it aside and unbuttoned the tiny buttons that ran from her hairline to the base of her spine. She stepped out of the dress, trembling. Gabrielle had given her a gruesome talk about men’s physical appetites. She was prepared to do her duty. More than that, she looked forward to a feast of Leopold’s kisses. She bent to remove her shoes.

“Let me,” he murmured, kneeling.

She felt ungrounded. Steadying against the back of a chair, she studied the wallpaper; if she looked at him she would faint. He slid one stocking from her leg. A small, strange noise escaped her throat when she felt his lips warm on the inside of her thigh. She gripped the chair.

He removed the last of her undergarments, and she felt the relief of her breasts coming unbound and the sting of cold—but wasn’t she warm? Did she fall? Or did he sweep her into his arms? He laid her on the bed and undressed himself. She didn’t recognize his expression—a look of hunger, purpose, desire, license. He bent over her, and she braced herself, but he did not enter her. He kissed her neck and stroked her breasts and her stomach. He kissed her belly, and she ran her fingers through his hair. His mouth on her skin was all she knew, then a shock of delight as his lips found a nipple. She grew hot with the ache of desire. Gabrielle had not said it would be like this.

Then he was inside her. Pain, and then not pain. He was filling her, surrounding her, blinding her to everything but him, and binding her to him, her husband, her friend. Then another unexpected thing happened: she felt him shudder as he lost himself inside her and surrendered to her. This was the mystery she had barely guessed at when Oktav kissed her in the shrubs on the cathedral road.

“I love you,” he said, and she understood.

And then it was over. The full weight of him was upon her, his head between her breasts, his breath heavy. She floated into sleep, happier than she thought possible on earth. The most important question had its answer: Who was she? She felt as if her self—the self out of which she had lived, breathed, and seen the world—had evaporated, yet all its particulars had come into sharp focus to animate this new person, made real by the love of this man. Marta Singer now knew her name; everything else would follow.

Susan left Gohrum House while the duke was away on his wedding trip. She had the excuse of her mother’s worsening illness, but she couldn’t have stayed in any event. She wasn’t in Bath six weeks before the landlady had made it a habit to shake her head sadly and look sideways at Susan’s expanding belly.

Mrs. Bead met Susan one morning at the bottom of the stairs. “Is that for the post?” She nodded at the letter in Susan’s hand.

“The doctor has told me to write to my brother,” Susan said. “My mother may not last the night.”

John was eighteen now and married, to Susan’s regret. He arrived the day after she buried their poor mother, took one look at Susan’s swollen shape and said, “My Meg is in about the same way as you.”

“Oh, John. You are so young.” This was too much to bear. “Is there no hope for our family?”

“None, I think.” John laughed. He had been a kind and sweet boy, and he looked to become a generous and good man. “Come home and meet my bride. She’s a good girl, and we’ve got a nice little farm on Gohrum’s land with an extra room that will do for you two.”

She hesitated. Carleson Peak was the last place she wanted to see again.

He said, “Don’t worry about Morgan Baker. Yes, I know all about that rascal. You think I didn’t see him trifle with my big sister?”

More than trifle, but there was no need to enlighten John further.

“He was dismissed not long after you went to London. The man was nothing but hot air. They say he went to New Holland.”

John cheerfully loaded her few bags and boxes into his cart, and Susan left Bath forever. John a tenant farmer! She had ruined herself and any chance of helping her brother to regain his inheritance. Even the duke would be loath to employ her now. For the first time in her life, she had no idea what to do.

Two months later, she still had no plan for the future. The pain came in waves, closer and closer together until one wouldn’t let go. She had to push. She had to.

Let me die
, she thought.
Let me die and have done with it
. The pains were so close together now she couldn’t catch her breath. She tried pacing her room, which helped for a few minutes. The next contraction took hold so fiercely she let out a scream, a scream that mixed with other screams down the hall in another room.

Her brother’s wife Margaret had been in labor for three days, and Susan could tell the midwife was worried. When her own pains started that morning, she’d stayed quiet. It was two months too early to be birth pangs. But could anything possibly be worse? If God could just let her die, she really wouldn’t mind.