Private Arrangements

213 Pages·2009·0.87 MB·English

by  Thomas Sherry

Chapter One

London
8 May 1893

Only one kind of marriage ever bore Society's stamp of approval.
Happy marriages were considered vulgar, as matrimonial felicity rarely kept
longer than a well-boiled pudding. Unhappy marriages were, of course, even
more vulgar, on a par with Mrs. Jeffries's special contraption that spanked forty
bottoms at once: unspeakable, for half of the upper crust had experienced it
firsthand.
No, the only kind of marriage that held up to life's vicissitudes was the
courteous marriage. And it was widely recognized that Lord and Lady Tremaine
had the most courteous marriage of them all.
In the ten years since their wedding, neither of them had ever uttered an unkind
word about the other, not to parents, siblings, bosom friends, or strangers.
Moreover, as their servants could attest, they never had spats, big or small; never
embarrassed each other; never, in fact, disagreed on anything at all.
However, every year some cheeky debutante fresh from the schoolroom would
point out—as if it weren't common knowledge—that Lord and Lady Tremaine
lived on separate continents and had not been seen together since the day after
their wedding.
Her elders would shake their heads. Foolish young girl. Wait 'til she heard
about her beau's piece on the side. Or fell out of love with the man she married.
Then she'd understand what a wonderful arrangement the Tremaines had:
civility, distance, and freedom from the very beginning, unencumbered by
tiresome emotions. Indeed, it was the most perfect marriage.
Therefore, when Lady Tremaine filed for divorce on grounds of Lord
Tremaine's adultery and desertion, chins collided with dinner plates throughout
London's most pedigreed dining rooms. Ten days later, as news circulated of
Lord Tremaine's arrival on English soil for the first time in a decade, the same
falling jaws dented many an expensive carpet from the heart of Persia.
The story of what happened next spread like a well-fed gut. It went something
tantalizingly like this: A summons came at the Tremaine town house on Park
Lane. Goodman, Lady Tremaine's faithful butler, answered the bell. On the other
side of the door stood a stranger, one of the most remarkable-looking gentlemen
Goodman had ever come across—tall, handsome, powerfully built, an imposing
presence.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Goodman said placidly. A representative of the
Marchioness of Tremaine, however impressed, neither gawked nor gushed.
He expected to be offered a calling card and a reason for the call. Instead, he
was handed the gentleman's headgear. Startled, he let go of his hold on the
doorknob and took the satin-trimmed top hat. In that instant, the man walked
past him into the vestibule. Without a backward glance or an explanation for this
act of intrusion, he began pulling off his gloves.
“Sir,” Goodman huffed. “You do not have permission from the lady of the
house to enter.”
The man turned around and shot Goodman a glance that, to the butler's shame,
made him want to curl up and whimper. “Is this not the Tremaine residence?”
“It is, sir.” The reiteration of sir escaped Goodman, though he hadn't intended
for it to happen.
“Then kindly inform me, since when does the master of the house require
permission from the lady to enter into his own domain?” The man held his
gloves together in his right hand and slapped them quietly against the palm of his
left, as if toying with a riding crop.
Goodman didn't understand. His employer was the Queen Elizabeth of her
time: one mistress and no master. Then the horror dawned. The man before him
was the Marquess of Tremaine, the marchioness's long-absent, good-as-dead
husband and heir to the Duke of Fairford.
“I do beg your pardon, sir.” Goodman held on to his professional calm and took
Lord Tremaine's gloves, though he was suddenly perspiring. “We have had no
notice of your arrival. I shall have your chambers prepared immediately. May I
offer you some refreshments in the meanwhile?”
“You may. And you may see to the unloading of my luggage,” said Lord
Tremaine. “Is Lady Tremaine at home?”
Goodman could not detect any unusual inflection in Lord Tremaine's tone. It
was as if he had simply come in from an afternoon snooze at his club. After ten
years! “Lady Tremaine is taking a constitutional in the park, sir.”
Lord Tremaine nodded. “Very good.”
Goodman instinctively trotted after him, the way he'd trail a feral beast if it
happened to have made it past the front door. It was only half a minute later, as
Lord Tremaine turned about and raised a brow, that Goodman realized he had
already been dismissed.

Something about his wife's town house disturbed Lord Tremaine.
It was surprisingly elegant. He had half-expected to see the kind of interior he'd
become accustomed to in the houses of his neighbors on lower Fifth Avenue:
grandiose, gilded, aiming only to recall the last days of Versailles.
She had a few chairs from that era, but they had held their share of velvet-clad
bottoms and looked comfortable rather than luxurious. Neither did he encounter
the heavy sideboards and unchecked proliferation of bric-a-brac that were firmly
associated, in his mind, with English homes.
If anything, her residence bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain villa in
Turin, at the foot of the Italian Alps, in which he had spent a few happy weeks
during his youth—a house with wallpapers of soft antique gold and muted
aquamarine, faience pots of orchids atop slender wrought-iron stands, and
durable, well-made furniture from the previous century.
During an entire boyhood of decamping from one domicile to the next, the villa
had been the only place, other than his grandfather's estate, where he'd felt at
home. He had loved its brightness, its uncluttered comfort, and its abundance of
indoor plants, their breath moist and herbaceous.
He was inclined to dismiss the echoing similarity between the two houses as a
coincidence until his attention shifted to the paintings that adorned the walls of
her drawing room. Between the Rubens, the Titian, and the ancestral portraits
that occupied disproportionate acreage on English walls, she had hung pieces by
the very same modern artists whose works he displayed in his own town house
in Manhattan: Sisley, Morisot, Cassatt, and Monet, whose output had been
infamously likened to unfinished wallpaper.
His pulse quickened in alarm. Her dining room featured more Monets and two
Degases. Her gallery made it look as though she had bought an entire
Impressionist exhibit: Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, and artists no one had ever heard
of outside the most gossipy circles of the Parisian art world.
He stopped midway down the gallery, suddenly unable to go on. She had
furnished this house to be a fantasy-come-true for the boy he had been when he
married her, the boy who must have mentioned, during their long hours of rapt
conversation, something of his preference for understated houses and his love of
modern art.
He remembered her spellbound concentration, her soft questions, her burning
interest in everything about him.
Was the divorce but a new ruse, then? A cleverly sprung trap to re-ensnare him
when all else had failed? Would he find her perfumed and naked on his bed
when he threw open the door to his bedchamber?
He located the master's apartment and threw open the door.
There was no her, naked or otherwise, on his bed.
There was no bed.
And nothing else either. The bedchamber was as vast and empty as the
American West.
The carpet no longer showed depressed spots where chair legs and bedposts had
once stood. The walls betrayed no telltale rectangles of recently removed
pictures. Thick layers of dust had settled on floor and windowsills. The room
had stood vacant for years.
For no reason at all, he felt as if the breath had been kicked out of his lungs.
The sitting room of the master's apartment was sparkling clean and fully
equipped—tuft-backed reading chairs, shelves laden with well-read books
wrinkled at the spines, a writing desk freshly supplied with ink and paper, even a
pot of amaranth in bloom. It made the void of the bedchamber all the more
pointed, a barbed symbol.
The house might have been, once upon a time, designed with the single-minded
goal of luring him back. But that was a different decade—another age altogether.
He had since been eviscerated from her existence.
He was still standing in the doorway, staring into the empty bedchamber, when
the butler arrived, two footmen and a large portmanteau in tow. The nothingness
of the chamber made the butler blush an extraordinary pink. “It will take us only
an hour, sir, to air the chamber and restore the furnishing.”
He almost told the butler not to bestir himself, to let the bedchamber remain
stark and barren. But that would have said too much. So he only nodded.
“Excellent.”
The prototype of the new stamping machine Lady Tremaine had ordered for
her factory in Leicestershire refused to live up to its promise. The negotiation
with the shipbuilder in Liverpool dragged on most unsatisfactorily. And she had
yet to answer any of the letters from her mother—ten in all, one for each day
since she'd petitioned for divorce—in which Mrs. Rowland questioned her sanity
outright and fell just short of comparing her intelligence to that of a leg of ham.
But that was all expected. What made her head pound was the telegram from
Mrs. Rowland three hours ago: Tremaine came ashore at Southampton this
morning. No matter how she tried to explain it to Freddie as something par for
the course—There are papers to sign and settlements to be negotiated, darling.
He has to come back at some point—Tremaine's arrival portended only trouble.
Her husband. In England. Closer than he had been in a decade, except for that
miserable incident in Copenhagen, back in '88.
“I need Broyton to come in tomorrow morning to look at some accounts for
me,” she said to Goodman, handing over her shawl, her hat, and her gloves as
she entered the town house and walked toward the library. “Kindly request Miss
Etoile's presence for some dictations. And tell Edie that I will wear the cream
velvet tonight, instead of the amethyst silk.”
“Madam—”
“I almost forgot. I saw Lord Sutcliffe this morning. His secretary has given
notice. I recommended your nephew. Have him present himself at Lord
Sutcliffe's house tomorrow morning at ten. Tell him that Lord Sutcliffe prefers a
man of sincerity and few words.”
“That is too kind of you, madam!” Goodman exclaimed.
“He's a promising young man.” She stopped before the library door. “On
second thought, have Miss Etoile come in twenty minutes. And make sure no
one disturbs me until then.”
“But your ladyship, his lordship—”
“His lordship will not be taking tea with me today.” She pushed the door open
and realized Goodman was still there, hovering. She turned halfway and glanced
at him. The butler wore a constipated expression. “What is it, Goodman? The
back troubling you again?”
“No, madam, it's not. It's—”
“It's me,” said a voice from inside the library. Her husband's voice.
For a long, stunned moment, all she could think was how glad she was that she
had not invited Freddie home with her today, as she often did after an afternoon
walk together. Then she could not think of anything at all. Her headache faded,
replaced by a mad rush of blood to her head. She was hot, then cold. The air
about her turned thick as pea soup, fine for gulping but impossible to inhale.
Vaguely, she nodded at Goodman. “You may return to your duties.”
Goodman hesitated. Did he fear for her? She entered the library and let the
heavy oak door close behind her, shutting out curious eyes and ears, shutting out
the rest of the world.
The windows of her library faced west, for a view of the park. The still-intense
sunlight cascaded through clear glass panes at an oblique angle and landed in
perfect rectangles of warm clarity on her Samarkand carpet, with its poppies and
pomegranates on a field of rose and ivory.
Tremaine stood just beyond the direct light, his hands braced against the
mahogany desk behind him, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He should be a
figure in relative obscurity, not particularly visible. Yet she saw him all too
clearly, as if Michelangelo's Adam had leapt off the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel, robbed a Savile Row bespoke tailor, and come to make trouble.
She caught herself. She was staring, as if she was still that nineteen-year-old
girl, devoid of depth but full of herself.
“Hullo, Camden.”
“Hullo, Gigi.”
She had allowed no man to call her by that childhood pet name since his
departure.
Forcing herself away from the door, she crossed the length of the library, the
carpet beneath her feet too soft, a quagmire. She marched right up to him, to
show that she did not fear him. But she did. He held powers over her, powers far
beyond those conferred by mere laws.
Even though she was a tall woman, she had to tilt her head to look him in the
eye. His eyes were a dark, dark green, like malachite from the Urals. She inhaled
his subtle scent of sandalwood and citrus, the aroma she had once equated with
happiness.
“Are you here to grant me the divorce or to be a nuisance?” She got to the point
right away. Trouble that was not confronted head-on always circled around to
bite one in the bum.
He shrugged. He had taken off his day coat and his necktie. Her gaze lingered
one second too long on the golden skin at the base of his neck. His shirt of fine
cambric draped over him lovingly, caressing his wide shoulders and long arms.
“I'm here to set conditions.”
“What do you mean, conditions?”
“An heir. You produce an heir and I will allow the divorce to proceed.
Otherwise I will name parties to your adultery. You do know that you cannot
divorce me on grounds of adultery if you happen to have committed the same
sin, don't you?”
Her ears rang. “Surely you jest. You want an heir from me? Now?”
“I couldn't stand the thought of bedding you before now.”
“Really?” She laughed, though she'd have preferred to smash an inkwell against
his temple. “You liked it well enough last time.”
“The performance of a lifetime,” he said easily. “And I was a good thespian to
begin with.”
Pain erupted inside her, corrosive, debilitating pain she'd thought she'd never
feel again. She groped for mastery and shoved the subject away from where she
was most vulnerable. “Empty threats. I have not been intimate with Lord
Frederick.”
“How chaste of you. I speak of Lord Wrenworth, Lord Acton, and the
Honorable Mr. Williams.”
She sucked in a breath. How did he know? She'd been ever so careful, ever so
discreet.
“Your mother wrote me.” He watched her, evidently enjoying her mounting
dismay. “Of course, she only wished for me to fly into a jealous rage and hurry
across the ocean to reclaim you as my own. I'm sure you will forgive her.”
If there ever existed extenuating circumstances for matricide, this was it. First
thing tomorrow, she'd set loose two dozen famished goats in Mrs. Rowland's
prized greenhouse. Then she'd corner the market on hair dyes and force the
woman to show her graying roots.
“You have a choice,” he said amicably. “We can resolve it privately. Or we can
have sworn testimonies from these gentlemen. You know every word they utter
would be in all the papers.”
She blanched. Freddie was her very own human miracle, steadfast and loyal,
loving her enough to willingly take part in all the hassle and ugliness of a
divorce. But would he still love her when all her former lovers had testified to
their affairs on public record?
“Why are you doing this?” Her voice rose. She took a deep breath to calm
herself. Any emotion she displayed before Tremaine was a show of weakness. “I
had my solicitors send you a dozen letters. You never responded. We could have
had this marriage annulled with some dignity, without having to go through this
circus.”
“And here I thought my lack of response adequately conveyed what I thought
of your idea.”
“I offered you one hundred thousand pounds!”
“I'm worth twenty times that. But even if I hadn't a sou, that's not quite enough
for me to stand before Her Majesty's magistrate and swear that I never touched
you. We both know perfectly well that I shagged you to a fare-thee-well.”
She flinched and grew hot. Unfortunately, not entirely from anger. The
memories of that night—no, she would not think about it. She had forgotten it
already. “This is about Miss von Schweppenburg, isn't it? You are still trying to
punish me.”
He gave her one of his cool stares that used to turn her knees to pudding. “Now,
why would you think that?”
And what could she say? What could she say without dragging up their entire
complicated and bitter history? She swallowed. “Fine,” she said, as indifferently
as she could. “I have an evening engagement to keep. But I should be home
about ten. I can permit you a quarter hour from half past ten.”
He laughed. “As impatient as always, my dear marchioness. No, tonight I will
not be visiting you. I'm weary from my travels. And now that I've seen you, I'll
need a few more days to get over my revulsion. But rest assured, I shall not be
bound by any asinine time limits. I will stay in your bed for as long as I want,
not a minute less—and not a minute more, no matter how you plead.”
Her jaw dropped from sheer stupefaction. “That is the most rid—”
He suddenly leaned toward her and placed an index finger over her lips. “I
wouldn't finish that sentence if I were you. You will not enjoy eating those
words.”
She jerked her head away, her lips burning. “I would not want you to remain in
my bed if you were the last man alive and I'd had nothing but Spanish flies for a
fortnight.”
“What images you bring to mind, my lady Tremaine. With every man in the
world perfectly alive and no aphrodisiacs at all, you were already a tigress.” He
pushed away from the desk. “I've had all I can take of you for a day. I wish you a
pleasant evening. Do convey my regards to your beloved. I hope he doesn't mind
my exercises in conjugal rights.”
He left without a backward glance.
And not for the first time.
Lady Tremaine watched the door closing behind her husband and rued the day