An Inconvenient Wife Part 23

I reached for the b.u.t.tons on my collar. "You said you wanted to see all of me. Shall I start now?"

He swallowed. His voice sounded strangled when he said, "There are other things we must work on."

"Such as?"

"I'd planned to make a suggestion regarding your drawing."

"It's unnecessary. William has forbidden it."

He didn't look at me. "If you truly want to be the woman I think you can be-"

"I want only you, Victor. Please, I've thought of nothing but you. Haven't you thought of me? Didn't the other night matter to you at all?" I rose and stepped toward him, moving around the chair that s.h.i.+elded him. "The woman you talk about, the woman you want me to be, shouldn't this be a part of it? Shouldn't I know about pa.s.sion?"

"Yes, of course," he said.

"Then I want you to show me," I said. "Teach me how to be that woman. I want to learn."

"Your . . . expectations must be . . . tempered," he said. "Only then can . . ." He looked at me. "Only then . . ."

I hardly heard his words. I knew only that he was wavering, that I had him, and I reached for him, putting my hand on his chest, curling my fingers against his suit coat.

"Lucy," he whispered, and I was triumphant.

He pulled me close and kissed me with his open mouth, as desperate and hungry as I was.

"I've given Irene the afternoon off," he murmured, kissing my cheek, my jaw, my throat, fumbling with the b.u.t.tons at the front of my bodice until we were both working together. My fingers jerked against his as we unfastened them.

"The things women wear," he said as I shrugged from my bodice and stepped from my skirt. He was struggling with the tapes of my bustle and the crinolette. When they were loose, he flung them away from me; I heard the springy sc.r.a.pe of the bustle as it bounced against the wall and slid to the floor. I stood before him in only my corset and stockings, and he fell to his knees before me and unfastened my garters, pus.h.i.+ng the stockings down my legs, rolling them off. I took off the corset cover and undid the front fastenings of the corset, and then he was standing again, pressing against me, roughly shoving the straps of my chemise from my shoulders so it pooled at my waist, and I was naked in a way I had never been before. I could not remember even William having seen me thus, and when Victor backed away to look at me, his gaze was so a.s.sessing that I crossed my arms over my b.r.e.a.s.t.s in sudden shyness.

He shrugged from his suit coat, pulling his braces down and unb.u.t.toning his s.h.i.+rt, and then his underwear, so that when he came to me and pushed my hands away, I felt his skin against my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and I lost myself completely. I had no more sense of who I was or what I was doing, only that I wanted him, and before I knew it, we were on the floor, completely naked, and I could hear nothing but my own cries and the rush of his breath.

"Is this what you want, Lucy?" he asked. "Is this why you came to me?"

I could only say, "Yes, yes," and move against him and clutch him, gasping and trembling as I climaxed in his arms. How had I lived without this before now? How could I live without it after?

"I've changed my mind," I whispered. "I'm no longer falling in love with you. I am in love with you."

He looked up, his weight still on me, his hair falling into his face. "This is all simply-"

"Don't say it," I warned, putting my finger against his lips. "Don't ruin it."

He pushed my hand away. "Love only complicates things. It can only imprison you. You said you loved William when you married him, didn't you?"

"I don't want to talk about him," I said. "Don't say his name."

"You can't deny it. You did love him."

"I thought I did," I protested. "But I didn't know. There was never anything like this. There won't ever be. My life with him is over."

"It can't be over, Lucy."

"It is. I'll tell him the truth. I'll tell him I'm in love with you."

"No." His gaze was burning. His weight pressed me into the floor. "It would ruin everything." His insistence surprised me. "You're weak now," he went on before I could speak. "If you tell him the truth, he'll destroy you. You're not strong enough to withstand social destruction alone."

"But I won't be alone. I'll have you."

"A Jew who lives in a tenement?"

"A doctor. A neurologist."

"A hypnotist, Lucy. Think about it. You yourself called me a charlatan when we first met. Your father still believes that's what I am. This city hasn't even begun to understand science. They don't hear the word hypnotism without thinking of Mesmer. To them it's some ridiculous parlor trick without study and experimentation, without results. We would be pariahs, both of us. Is that what you want?"

"We would be together."

"Your romantic notions are misplaced," he said dryly. "Poverty is its own kind of prison. Social banishment is only another set of chains."

"You want me to stay with William."

"For now."

"For how long?"

He rolled onto his side, tracing my breast and stroking to my rib. I began to melt again, to want him.

"Just tell me what to do," I murmured as his hand stroked down the soft underside of my arm, a steady caress. "I'll do whatever you say."

Notes from the Journal of Victor Leonard Seth Re: Eve C.

April 25, 1885 I have convinced Eve's husband to allow treatment to continue, and Eve has not only agreed, she has given me carte blanche.

Today I planted the suggestion that she would want above all things to see me, in spite of any persuasion by her husband or anyone else against me. I have also reinforced my insistence on secrecy and instructed that she continue her life as it is until I determine she is ready to make decisions about her future.

PART II.

Newport Beach, Rhode Island.

June 1885.

Chapter 19.

This year I packed for Newport with an excitement that far surpa.s.sed any other season's.

Though I'd always loved Newport, and the chance to summer at the cottage my father had owned since he sold the summer house on the Hudson, I had been growing to love it less and less. When I was a child, it had been a wonderful place, full of sea breezes that rushed through the open windows and swept papers and knickknacks to the floor, and the sound of the waves rus.h.i.+ng upon the beach, and an expanse of lawn that rolled right to the edge of the sea. But now the rest of New York had discovered it as well, and the summers that I'd spent alone and free had become full of social strictures and rigid schedules and notions of etiquette that were as confining as New York City's, with the addition of hot summer weather and sand.

This year, however, I was restless with my haste to go. The months could not pa.s.s quickly enough for me. Though I had held tight to Victor's conviction that I must stay with William, I wanted to spend some time without my husband. He would be able to leave his work only on the weekends, and I was giddy with the freedom that promised.

The strain of this last month had worn on me. In the beginning I could not look at my husband without remembering what Victor and I had done together-what we continued to do-but it became easier, my guilt and shame fading to acceptance; no, more than that. It was as if my relations.h.i.+p with Victor were somehow a reward for all that marriage to William had taken from me, all that my father's dominance had taken from me. It had become my birthright, and in light of that, my guilt faded. But what took its place was harder and less elastic. What took its place was resentment and impatience. I could not see William without wis.h.i.+ng him away, and the time we spent together became harder to bear.

Victor and I still met twice a week, but we gradually saw each other even more often. First an extra hour seized in his office, and then, as he continued his ascent into my social circle, minutes grasped on an outdoor terrace, in an abandoned room down a darkened hallway, stolen kisses. Oh, how I loved him. It seemed that the stronger my love grew for him, the more I chafed at the social schedule that had kept me so bound for so long.

It began with my unwillingness to go to Daisy Hadden's country house for two weeks.

"But you've always gone," William protested. "She expects it of you."

"Well, I don't wish to go," I told him. "I haven't time."

"You haven't time? Good G.o.d, Lucy, you do nothing."

"Daisy hasn't a brain in her head," I said. "She's the most boring company I know, and I won't spend another moment admiring those diamonds Moreton gave her because he feels guilty over meeting Madeline Hoover at the Metropolitan Hotel."

"Lucy!"

"Well, it's true, William. You know it as well as I."

"But-"

"Daisy knows it too. As long as she gets a weekly box from Tiffany's, she doesn't care."

He was quiet, and I looked up to see him staring at me, a speculative expression on his face.

"What?" I asked. "What is it?"

"What's happened to you?" he asked. "What's happened to my kind little wife?"

"Perhaps she's grown tired of kindness."

He took a deep breath. "Perhaps we should stay home for a while."

I waved him away. "Soon it will be summer and you can send me off to Newport, where I won't embarra.s.s you."

He looked thoughtful, and I felt a twinge of guilt that I banished quickly.

"Perhaps we should stay home this year," he said. "The house . . ."

"William, it won't be finished for months. There's no reason to stay in the city."

"McKim expects it will be done by the start of the season," he said.

Already the house was rising into the air, brownstone and wood. I could not drive by it without thinking of it as prison walls. "There will be something else to change," I said. "There always is."

"It will all come together more quickly than you think. And we've barely begun to furnish it."

"Jean-Baptiste has it well under control," I said. "Oh, William, you can't mean not to go to Newport. I simply must."

"I wouldn't miss it," he said.

"But I would."

"Yes. You'd shrivel up without your sea breezes and that wretched seaweed."

"You can mock me all you like," I said, feeling defiant. "I will go alone, then."

He took a deep breath. His eyes grew sad. "You've changed, Lucy," he said.

I turned away. "Yes, thank G.o.d. You should be grateful. I haven't had a fit in ages."

"That's true," he agreed, but I sensed that he was less happy about that than he had expected to be. When he said, "Don't make me regret being generous, Lucy," I stared after him, perplexed and anxious as he left me.

I wanted no more of his silent thoughtfulness, or my sense that he saw more than I wanted him to see. Newport lingered like a beacon before me.

My trunks were packed days before we were to take the steamer over, and I was not relieved until Narragansett Bay was before me and I saw the huge yellow paG.o.da of the Ocean House Hotel and the waves splas.h.i.+ng lazily against the boulders of Purgatory Rocks. Then I felt my spirit leap to meet it.

A local woman, Sadie Longstreet, cared for the house during the rest of the year. As in other years, she had sent her son David with a wagon for our trunks. The breeze was slight and full of salt, the elms bordering the street lending graceful shade. Budding hydrangeas were bright green against weathered clapboards.

"Right on schedule," David said as he tipped his hat to William and me. His s.h.a.ggy dark hair fell forward, and he shoved it back again beneath the brim. His teeth were stained from tobacco, but other than that, he was a handsome young man and much stronger than his lanky frame suggested. He lifted our trunks easily and settled them in the wagon, then he helped me up beside him while William perched in the bed.

"What's changed, David?" I asked him, and he gave me a sideways glance.

"Now, ma'am," he said. "You know nothing ever changes here."

"Isn't that the truth," William muttered from behind me.

I ignored him, and we moved off, leaving the weathered and picturesque little town behind, making our way down Bellevue Avenue, where the rocky, shallow cliffs and hills gave way to rolling lawns and summer cottages that had grown steadily larger in the years since we'd first come here.

Seaward, our cottage, was one of the smaller ones. It was wood, instead of stone or marble, and no chateau. It was a charming house, with mansard roofs over the dormers and striped awnings covering the porch that wrapped all the way around, with graceful steps down to the lawn and bushy hydrangeas and climbing roses bordering the sides. The windows were wide and blinking in the sun, the drapes already opened by the efficient Sadie, the wicker furniture set out on porch floors swept clean of sand or debris tossed by winter storms.

When we arrived, I was so eager I leaped from the wagon nearly before it was stopped. I hurried from the drive to the front porch, where Sadie waited at the door.

"Welcome, Mrs. Carelton," she said. "It's all ready for you. I had David repaint the porch in the spring, and I made sure to scrub it this time, like you asked last year. I've removed all the dustcovers and aired out the mattresses. I think you'll find it quite satisfactory."

"Oh, it's lovely," I said.

She frowned. My arrival last year came to me: how tired I'd been, how nervous. How the porch was in such a state, and the rooms felt damp, and I needed to lie down immediately to quiet my pounding head.

The thought embarra.s.sed me, and when she stepped back from the door, I went inside quickly. The entryway was big and square, the hardwood floors gleaming. In the middle rose the staircase with its simple bal.u.s.trades, smelling of beeswax. The doorways were large and arched, so it seemed all the downstairs rooms connected to the hall and to one another. The breezes whirled through on hot summer days, crossing in little eddies of current, so it was impossible to stand in the entry and not be cooled.

It looked as if I had just left yesterday. I went from room to room as David brought the trunks inside and lumbered upstairs with them. The door of the first parlor, whose windows fronted the ocean, led onto the wide porch that shaded it. The back parlor was all in green, with a calm, even light that shone on the piano and shelves filled with books-they would not fade here, where the sun was not so harsh. The dining room opened onto the porch as well, and the kitchen held on its shelves green and cranberry gla.s.s, dishes st.u.r.dier than what I kept in the city; there were so many alfresco dinners here.