An Inconvenient Wife Part 28

William cut him dead with a look. "This is a public beach. Anyone might see."

It was a reminder, a warning: We might have been heedless enough to display our affair at Bailey's Beach, but William was civilized. He would not brawl there; he would not give us the chance to appease him, or even the satisfaction of his anger.

"I saw David outside with the landau," he said tonelessly. He held out his hand to me. "He's waiting to go home."

I got to my feet, and Victor unfolded himself. I took up the blanket, bundling it, sand and all, my fingers trembling. I looked to Victor for support, but his features were etched in taut relief; his tension was unbearable. I turned back to William, who said to Victor, "You'll come with us."

Victor said, "Of course."

"I'll let no one accuse me of leaving a houseguest to walk the distance home. After all, I'm a generous man. Generous to a fault, some have said." He laughed shortly. "Generous enough to offer up even my wife, it seems."

"William," I said.

He turned, his nostrils white, his hands fisted. "I don't want to hear a word from you."

It was not until I'd endured the horrible, silent ride home that I realized I'd left my gown behind in the bathing pavilion, that I was still wearing my bathing costume, that my skin was dry and sticky with salt. Once we were at Seaward, William dismissed David with a curt word. Sadie was in the kitchen, in the midst of putting together tea. He told her to go home for the evening, that we had no more need of her today.

It was only when they were gone that William turned to me and Victor.

"Who else knows?" he asked me. His voice was slow and quiet and deadly.

"No one," I rushed to tell him. "No one. It's not what-" I stopped, unable to say the words It's not what you think. Because it was exactly what he thought, and I could not make myself lie.

He nodded shortly. "I understand we've accepted an invitation to By-the-Bay for supper tonight."

I could not bear his civility. I felt like crying. "Oh, for G.o.d's sake, William. Please don't do this."

"Have we accepted the invitation?"

"Yes. Yes. But I'll send our regrets right away." I turned to go to my desk.

"No," William said. He was looking at Victor, who stood expressionless. William's face was terrible in its humiliation and rage. "We'll go tonight."

I was stunned. "Are you mad?"

"We'll go tonight," he continued. "And we will enjoy ourselves as if nothing has happened. Victor will enjoy himself. I want him to remember how much. I want him to revel in it. Because it's the last time he'll ever attend such a thing."

I stared at him, aghast. "What do you mean?"

William ignored me. He smiled at Victor. "Victor, my friend, after tonight, your career as a 'brilliant' neurologist in this city will be over. You won't be welcomed in any home. If I were you, I'd return to Leipzig. When I'm finished with you, it will be the only place that will have you."

"William," I said. "You can't-"

He leveled a look that both silenced and stilled me. "You're wrong, Lucy. I can. And I will. Tomorrow. Tonight you will do what I want for once. I won't be humiliated. We will go to By-the-Bay. We will be the happy couple, and Victor will be our grateful houseguest. You will be my obedient wife. No one will know about this. I won't drag your name into the mud, darling, nor mine with it."

For a moment I thought insanely of Robert Carr, of how he'd gone to London to bring his wife home from an affair with an English baron. Of how she'd come. Of how they played the happy couple at her blue supper.

I looked wildly at William, and then at Victor, who continued to stand silently. Why had he said nothing? "I won't do this," I said. "I won't go tonight. I can't."

Victor said, "Lucy, do as he asks."

William said sarcastically, "Yes, Lucy, listen to Victor. Do as he tells you. How well he controls you. Better than your own husband. Tell me, Victor, did you summon her to your bed, or did she come of her own accord?"

Victor looked away.

"I trusted you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d." William's control looked as if it might snap. Then he struggled, his teeth clenched; he calmed himself.

I felt sick. "William, please, don't do this. Scream at me if you must. Be angry. Just don't be this way."

"I've had enough of pa.s.sion," he said. His pale gaze made me s.h.i.+ver; I knew he spoke of me, of what I was, of who I was. "Get dressed for Julia's supper, Lucy. You look a sight."

I turned away, unable to face him or to bear Victor's stolid acceptance of his fate. I did as he asked; I went to dress for supper.

By-the-Bay was alight and glorious. The middle of the dining table had been made into a pond that held pink water lilies; everyone said the soft-sh.e.l.l crabs and roasted partridge were sublime, though it was impossible for me to try even a bite. There was plenty of champagne, and William drank more than he usually did so that his cheeks were faintly reddened, and his eyes were gla.s.sy with a good humor that held cynicism and pain beneath it.

He kept me hard by his side most of the night, forcing me to smile, to pretend that all was well, to fight the tension that made me feel ill, that made my head pound. He caught every glance I threw to Victor, who showed no ill effects of this afternoon; he was circulating, smiling, his usual charming self. Desperate for instruction, I wanted to ask him what he wanted of me, what my role should be, but William made sure that such a meeting was impossible. I had no hope of rescue. I was paralyzed by the weight of my future.

"Victor seems to have enraptured them all," William whispered to me. He took a great swallow of wine. "You didn't tell me he's become the darling of Newport."

"Yes," I said absently. "He's quite requested."

"Why?"

I nodded toward Victor, who was talking animatedly to Gerald Fister. "He's worked magic among them. They adore him." William's mouth tightened. I said to him, "I'm asking you not to destroy him. I'm begging you."

"I've given you everything you've ever wanted, Lucy, but I'm done with that now." He frowned, his gaze pa.s.sing across the room. "What's going on?"

I saw that Victor's magic was happening already, as it always did after supper, when it was quite late, and everyone was too drunk to dance and too awake to go home. Victor would be talking, and someone would find him, touch his arm, whisper into his ear. Across the room two chairs would already be facing each other, ready for the night's entertainment.

I saw the touch, the whisper. I saw the chairs set up where the orchestra was packing up their instruments and readying to leave. It was almost two o'clock in the morning. I looked back at Victor to see that he was staring at me, so intently that I looked down, trying to warn him with my inattention. I felt William put his arm around my waist. He staggered a little with the movement; he was quite drunk.

"What is it?" William asked. "Where are they going?"

"It's Victor," I said, wanting to leave.

"Victor?"

"You once asked how he hypnotized me. Now is your opportunity to find out."

William frowned but went with all the others, and because he did not release his hold on me, I went too. There was muttering and the growing sound of laughter, of suspense. There were those in this crowd who had just come to Newport and not yet seen Victor's performance. And it was to be a good one. I saw Victor's charisma in full force. I wondered how he could be so calm, knowing that everything would be gone tomorrow. That I would be gone.

He began with Millie, who smiled and giggled nervously, like a girl, as he called her name. She went to the chair and sat, pulling her saffron skirts around her demurely, looking at him expectantly as Victor took the seat before her and held her thumbs in his.

"I must ask for silence," he said. I knew these words so well, this performance so intimately. "Complete silence."

The crowd went dead. Beside me William went taut. His fingers stiffened against my waist.

It went as it always had, every move perfect. Millie's trance, the stiff arm, the pinp.r.i.c.k. Victor varied the hallucination, as he sometimes did. This time Millie went to the table, which was being cleared, and moved aside the gla.s.ses and silverware as if preparing for bed. Then she crawled onto it and lay down, pulling up imaginary blankets, fluffing nonexistent pillows. When he woke her, she heard a flute on the porch.

William was astounded. "Is this what he does to you?"

"I don't know," I said.

Leonard Ames, dancing attendance on Alma, was next. William watched with unease. Finally I felt him snap. His hand tightened on my arm as he pulled me from the crowd. His voice was clipped when he said, "We're going home."

I could not stop him. He was an immovable force, and he took me from that room as if I were a child. The others were too enraptured by Victor to notice our absence. I could only stumble after my husband, who jerked me so relentlessly that my arm felt wrenched from its socket. "William," I said. "William, please."

But he did not slow as he took me from the room and down the hall out to the porch. He bit off an instruction to the servant to fetch the carriage.

"I don't understand." I grabbed William's arm to stop him. "What happened? I don't understand."

He shook off my arm as if he couldn't stand my touch. "Is that how he does it?" William spat. "Does he control you so easily? My G.o.d, they were like puppets. Puppets! And you're the worst of them."

I wanted to cry. What was happening now, it was not real, it couldn't be real. "Don't be absurd, William. He-"

"He's like a G.o.d in there, creating people. I was right. d.a.m.n it, look what he's done to you." William nearly shoved me into the carriage. He put his fist to the ceiling, and we were off. I huddled in the corner until we were at Seaward. When we went into the house, William took my arm and yanked me up the stairs, and I was so miserable and confused that I let him. I said nothing when he propelled me through the door of our bedroom and slammed it shut behind us. Even when I realized how he planned to punish me, I did not fight him.

"Did he spend the night with you in our bed?" he asked me, pus.h.i.+ng me back upon the mattress, tugging off his coat, jerking upon his collar.

I turned my face away from him.

"How long has it been going on, my sweet angel? How long have you been his wh.o.r.e?"

He was on me. He shoved up my skirts, and I lay there, numb and still, and let him. He was naked-I had felt him that way only once before, on our wedding night.

He muttered more, other obscenities, so wretched and horrible that I stopped hearing him. I could not even feel him. When he was finished, he lay there for a moment longer, covering me, and then he left. I did not hear him or know where he had gone. I moved my head and felt a warm wetness on the pillow beside me. His tears, I realized in a slow burn of regret. My own eyes were dry.

Notes from the Journal of Victor Leonard Seth It is over. My experiment with Eve is over. Her husband has removed her from my care, and I find that I have no choice but to relinquish her. Dear G.o.d, to lose her this way . . .

I tell myself it is for the best: I have done the research required for my paper; I have no doubt that when I present it to the Neurology a.s.sociation this fall, it will receive the accolades it deserves. And it is best to withdraw from her now, before I begin to question my motives in keeping her. I must ask myself why I continued to work with her when I had succeeded in doing what I set out to do. I have felt desperate at the thought of losing her, and my rational mind says this should not be so. She is a patient, nothing more. My worries these last days, when I have felt her questioning, beginning to withdraw; when I have seen suspicion in her eyes, suspicion planted by her friends, by the man who calls himself her husband-suspicion of me, who has saved her!-I have not been myself. She remains my creature. And yet perhaps I did not completely see. Experiments flourish best in a controlled environment, and Eve's environment is not within my hands.

I find it best to focus on writing my paper. I cannot fight for her without her husband creating a scandal, and I cannot allow such a thing to besmirch my findings. I lost myself for a time; I had been so enthralled with Eve's development that I had forgotten it all must end. The experiment is over. The results are gathered. I cannot think of her. I must not think of her. I must not want her.

Chapter 24.

The door was locked from the outside. William had made me a prisoner. There was no connecting room, no way to escape unless I chose to jump the two stories from the balcony. My chest began to tighten in that familiar way, the way I hadn't felt for months. I went to the bed and sank onto it, forcing myself to breathe, to calm, and the things I had refused to think of came into my head: Victor's and my kiss at Bailey's Beach, William's anger, his threats. I heard Millie's words again-It's unhealthy the way he controls you . . . as if he has you under his spell, and I was afraid because I knew it was true and I knew that of all of us, I had lost the most. Because he had changed me, and I could not go back to who I'd been. I had felt, in those last moments, Victor's surrender to William, his release of me, and I knew he would do what he could to save himself.

I went to the balcony and stepped out into the cool air, staring at the sea that was only a stain of darkness beyond. The moon had fallen, and there was a heaviness in the air that spoke of heat tomorrow. I felt a dread that made me unsteady, so I sat on the wicker chair near the doors. Tomorrow. I saw the faint edges of dawn lighting the horizon. Tomorrow was here; it would be daylight soon.

But it was not until dawn was lighting the sky, making the sea look darker than ever, bringing breezes that were already warm enough to break perspiration on my skin, that I saw a man walking along the seawall. I rose and went to the railing, clad only in my dressing gown, my hair loose and blowing into my face. I watched the familiar walk, the way a borrowed morning coat flapped against the back of his thighs, and it was then that I hurt, that the pressure of it seemed too much to contain. I leaned out over the railing to call to him. Before I could, he stopped and looked up at me, and then he turned a little, and I saw William step from the porch to stand on the lawn, waiting as I waited on the balcony above him.

Victor came up the lawn toward the house. I was afraid to say anything; William's hands were clenching at his sides, and I saw in him the mindless fury that had driven him to punish me. My own hands were so tight on the railing that I ceased to feel my fingers. It seemed to take Victor an eternity to make his way to the house.

When he came close enough, I saw the dissolution of the night on him, rumpled evening clothes, boots covered with wet sand, beard shadow. But his presence was still so compelling to me that when he stopped before William, my husband seemed shrunken and wan, like a ghost before a live and vibrant man.

"I want you to leave my house," William said, barely controlled, and Victor nodded.

"No. . . ." I had not meant to say anything. The sound was a breath. But they both heard it. Victor looked up at me, and William looked over his shoulder.

"Get into the house," he said. "This is between me and Victor."

Victor looked weary. "Go inside," he said softly. Strangely, I found myself doing so. I went into my bedroom and sat on the bed, and then I heard the two of them come into the house, the closing of the back parlor door, the rise and fall of voices. My worry weighted me as the voices went quieter and quieter. My dread grew so that I went to the door and tried the k.n.o.b again, though I knew it wouldn't give.

Then I heard the parlor door open and footsteps on the stairs-Victor's steps. I rattled the k.n.o.b. "Victor," I called. "Victor, he's locked me in." There was no answer, only the brief pause of footsteps, then their resumption as he went to the back bedroom.

It was an hour before I heard them again, along with the brush of something heavy against the walls. His bag. I pounded on the door. "Let me out," I called. As the footsteps kept going, I called more loudly. "William, you must let me out. Victor!"

I rushed to the balcony, throwing myself on it so abruptly that my dressing gown flew open. I stood there with my nakedness exposed as Victor stepped off the porch, William beside him.

"Victor, no!" I cried. He did not look up; I saw nothing to show he had even heard me, and then they were gone, around the corner of the house where I could no longer see them. He could not be leaving me, not like this, not without a word.

In the distance I heard the wagon, David's voice, the crack of reins, the starting creak of wheels. The road was on the other side of the house; I could not see him go. I could only listen until the sound of the wagon retreated.

He had left me.

William came around to the porch. When he caught sight of me still standing there, he frowned.

"Go inside, Lucy," he said. "You've forgotten yourself. You're indecent."

"Where did he go?"

"I won't talk to you about this here," he said.

"Where did he go?" I had raised my voice; I heard it echo out over the beach.

William said, "Calm down."

I did just the opposite. I went into the bedroom and pounded at the door with all my strength, until he hurried up the stairs and pushed open the door. He stepped inside, closing it tightly behind him, saying, "Calm down, Lucy. For G.o.d's sake, what if the neighbors should hear?"

"I don't care."

William's expression was tight and mean. "He used you, Lucy. I should think you'd be glad that he's gone."

"Where has he gone?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"Why? You're my wife. He's gone from your life for good."