Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (53 page)

‘Pregnant! But that is impossible!’

‘Luc, of course it’s not. We haven’t exactly been – abstaining—’

‘But – you are always so careful!’

Her carefulness irritated him sometimes, he would complain that it destroyed spontaneity, that she could not possibly be as eager as he.

‘Well – not careful enough. Luc, don’t look like that, it’s supposed to be good news—’

She smiled at him bravely: she didn’t feel that herself, but—

‘It is not good news, Adele. We have enough problems, Noni is only one year old, we don’t have very much money—’

‘Not my fault, Luc,’ Adele could feel herself growing angry, tearful, ‘anyway, if you’d only let me spend my allowance—’

‘Don’t mention that to me.’

‘But why not? When it would make all the difference.’

‘I will not have help from your father. It is an insult.’

‘Of course it’s not an insult. It’s just your absurd male pride.’

‘I am sorry that you should find me absurd.’

‘Oh Luc,’ said Adele wearily, ‘this isn’t doing us any good. I’m pregnant, we’re hard up, it’s not the end of the world, not the first time it’s happened. Aren’t you at all pleased?’

‘Are you?’

She hesitated. He pounced.

‘There, you see. It is not a good thing. For any of us.’

‘Well, thank you for that, Luc.’ Adele stood up, waving the plate of food the waiter was proffering away. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to just get rid of it, this – this bad thing. I think I’ll go back to the apartment. If you don’t mind. I don’t see any point sitting here talking like this. Please don’t make a noise when you come in, Noni is cutting a tooth. I don’t expect you to be troubled with such trivia, but if she cries all night it might disturb you, make you too tired to do your important work tomorrow.’

She cried herself to sleep and when Noni woke her at three, crying with pain from her tooth, Luc had still not come home.

CHAPTER 24

‘The glittering society wedding took place yesterday between Mr Laurence Elliott, of Elliott House, Fifth Avenue, New York, and Miss—’

Barty hurled the paper into a corner of the room; she couldn’t bear to read any more. Of course she was meant to, meant to read all of them, it was in all the papers, all the dailies, and he had had them delivered in a large parcel marked personal and confidential to her at Lytton House, Third Avenue.

Three months earlier, there had been the engagement announcements and he had had those delivered to her as well; not only the formal announcements in the papers, in the
New York Times
, and the
Times Herald
and even the
Wall Street Journal
, but the fuller stories in the social papers and columns, pictures of the radiant bride to be, beaming at her fiancé. In the
Southampton Times
the picture had been taken on the verandah of South Lodge, the happy couple dressed in white slacks and blazer, ‘about to leave the south shore for an afternoon on Mr Elliott’s yacht
Jeanette
, named after his late beloved mother’. The
Social Spectator
had shown them in the indoor courtyard of Elliott House, while the
Gazette
had photographed them in the ballroom, ‘where the happy couple have already hosted several dazzling parties’.

Well, they were welcome to one another, the happy couple, Barty had told herself then, and well-suited too; what fool of a girl would agree to marry a man after a six-week courtship, who, except a man seriously emotionally disturbed, would ask her while professing himself still passionately in love with someone else?

It had been one of the many nightmare conversations between them: the last, in fact, or so she had hoped and prayed: when he had told her he was going to propose to Annabel Charlton that night, ‘Unless of course you choose to stop me.’

She had no intention of stopping him, she said, and would have hoped indeed it would not be possible; but ‘Of course you can stop it,’ he said, ‘any moment. Just tell me not to, and that will be that.’

‘Laurence,’ she said and it took every ounce of willpower she had, ‘I wouldn’t dream of telling you anything at all and certainly not what to do about your personal life. I hope that you and Annabel will be very happy. Good afternoon.’

But it had not been the last conversation; there had been another, the night before the wedding.

‘I still love you, Barty. I will cancel this whole thing tomorrow if you say so. It’s you I want to marry.’

She had put the phone down.

She stared at the wedding photographs, at Laurence, superbly handsome in what the Americans called his cutaway – his morning dress – and Annabel, simpering in a tiered concoction of lace, a tiara – what would Celia have to say about that, Barty wondered with a stab of malice – in her dark hair. The ceremony had taken place at St Patricks – the bride was Catholic – and the reception at the bride’s home in Carnegie Hill had been a formal wedding breakfast for six hundred. The honeymoon was to take place in Venice.

Venice: that hurt. Laurence had promised to take her there, it was to have been their first stop on the European tour they were to share. She felt her eyes sting. She must cling to the thought that she was extremely fortunate never to have married him. That she had realised the full extent of his instability, and that the original instinct which had told her that to marry him was dangerous and wrong for her, had been correct.

But – it had all been very dreadful. Painful beyond anything she could have imagined.

She had refused to give an answer to his proposal for several weeks; dazzled by love for him, and – and she would hardly have been human had this not been at least a factor, however small – and the prize he had offered her. A half share in Lyttons New York! Even as she lay awake that first night, tossing and turning, absolutely unable to sleep, she remembered his words, his theory about everyone having a price. Was she really so mercenary, so ambitious, that she would accept such a gift? Could she accept it, what would the Lyttons say, Celia and Wol – and Giles of course? How could she face them, having become at a stroke their equal, or at least something close to it, in a position of power, not through earning it, but through marrying someone rich and powerful? Becoming the kind of person she least approved of? And then as the dawn broke, she found her mind reflecting treacherously on the undoubted and wicked delight of that: of Barty, the foundling, the poor little girl from the slums, come to possess such power.

But that was not the point, she told herself severely, setting it firmly aside, that was not the point at all, indeed, if she did marry Laurence, she would refuse the shares, refuse his wedding gift, she did not want it, she would not be able to live with it or herself.

She did not see Laurence at all for over two weeks; she told him she had to have time to think, to reflect on his proposal, away from the powerful insistent pressure he exerted upon her. He sent her flowers and presents daily, a huge beribboned box arrived, which she opened with some trepidation. Inside it was another box and inside that another and then another, until finally, her office overflowing with paper and ribbon and cards, she came to a tiny box from Cartier with a ring inside it, the diamond so big that it entirely covered her small knuckle when she tried it on.

‘Don’t you like it?’ he said indignantly, when she telephoned him to thank him and she said she did, very much, it was beautiful, but that it was not quite for her, too large, too ostentatious, she would be happier with something smaller.

‘Absolute nonsense,’ he said, ‘no wife of mine will wear a small ring,’ and she had said she was not his wife and nor would she be wearing it; next day another ring arrived, studded with several smaller diamonds, much prettier and more her style.

Finally, she decided; over dinner at the Plaza – ‘well it is our place’ – she told him that she would like to marry him – ‘Only “like”, that seems to lack passion, Barty?’ – and ignoring that, had gone on to say, that she was not ready yet, would not be for many months, she needed time to prepare herself and her life, she didn’t even want the engagement announced yet and if he went ahead, then she would insert another announcement the following day, cancelling it.

Sulkily at first, he had accepted the deal, then saw it as a challenge to make things more difficult for her, dropping hints to journalists, to people like Elsa Maxwell, that he might just conceivably and within the just about foreseeable future, cease to be a bachelor. Rumours began to fly about, paragraphs in the press; Barty confronted him with them, and he laughed and said he hadn’t said a single word to anyone that she could contest or even argue with.

Finally, on New Year’s Eve, ‘our anniversary’, she said he could go ahead and make the announcement.

‘I love you and I want to marry you, so I don’t quite know why I’m making all this fuss,’ she said, and he said he had no idea either.

They were spending the night at South Lodge; he wanted to be alone with her, he said, in their special place, to celebrate the happiest year of his life.

‘I want you to come to England, very soon now,’ said Barty, ‘to meet everyone. It’s so important to me. I want them to meet you, know what you’re really like, that you’re not the devil incarnate that they’ve heard about from Robert and Maud—’

‘And if they decide that I am—’

‘Then I shall have to work very hard to change their minds.’

‘But you won’t change yours?’

‘No, Laurence, I won’t change mine. I can’t think of anything that would do that.’

And then it had happened.

He had suddenly become rather pale and agitated; he said he would like to lie down.

‘It’s nothing, really, just one of my migraines, if you wouldn’t be too offended, my darling, I would like to be alone for a while. The effects are not always very attractive.’

She knew what he meant, she had witnessed one before; they were rare, only coming about twice a year, but savage, the intense pain accompanied by violent vomiting.

She had seen him up to bed, and left him obediently, slept in the guest room along the corridor; in the early morning she had got up and gone to see how he was. He was clearly in agony, and extremely ill.

‘I think, perhaps, you should phone the doctor, when it’s as bad as this, he gives me a shot, puts me out. I’m sorry, darling, not very romantic, oh God—’

She left him, hurried to the telephone; the doctor came within the hour and gave Laurence an injection.

‘He’ll be all right now. Poor man, dreadful, these things are. But he’ll be out for a good twenty-four hours, you won’t get a cheep out of him. I should go back to bed yourself.’

But in the morning, she decided to go home briefly; she had work to do on
Brilliant Twilight
, she was fretting over it and she could collect it and bring it back. She went to find Mills, Laurence’s driver; he said he would be only too happy to drive her, with the wonderful new Triboro Bridge, it would only take three hours at the most, the roads would be clear, she could collect her work and he would bring her right back.

They were in Gramercy Park by midday; she ran in, collected her briefcase, checked the contents – proofs, original manuscript, cover designs – and then phoned South Lodge. Laurence was still absolutely unconscious.

She was just letting herself out of the door, leafing through the letters on the hall table at the same time, for she had not been there for fortyeight hours, when Elise Curtis appeared from her own small, rather murky apartment.

‘Happy New Year, Miss Miller.’

‘Happy New Year to you, Elise. Did you have a good time last night?’

‘Oh – you know. So, so. I haven’t seen you to talk to for months, Miss Miller. Course I’ve been working nights—’

‘Yes, and I’ve been away a lot,’ said Barty quickly, remorseful that whenever she did see Elise she avoided her, dreading the long rambling stories and the sickly odour that accompanied her everywhere. ‘And then of course I had to go to England for several weeks. My – my uncle was very ill—’

‘Yes, I heard you’d gone. That was the bad news in the cable, I suppose?’

Barty stared at her. ‘What cable, Elise?’

‘Why the one that came for you. I signed for it, you know. The day before you went to England. Well you must surely have got it? I gave it to your – your gentleman friend, he was waiting for you outside in his car, I told him to be sure he gave it to you. He didn’t forget, surely—’

He had tried of course: to deny it first, and then when that proved impossible, to try to explain; she observed him, observed him in a mixture of disgust and rage, lying, prevaricating, jumping ahead of her in a series of the dizzying moves that she had come to know rather well. Lies about phoning London, about making sure Oliver was all right, about wanting to tell her himself after she had had a night’s sleep: ‘You were so tired, so overwrought, I thought it best that you should hear in the morning. You couldn’t do anything that night—’

‘I could have phoned,’ she said and her voice was high, trembling, ‘found out how he was. Started making arrangements. They would have known I cared. Instead of—’

‘I did instruct whoever it was to make sure they knew you had phoned.’

‘But I – oh this is ridiculous. Who did you speak to? No one mentioned it—’

‘I have no idea. Some incompetent servant who clearly didn’t pass the message on.’

‘The butler at Cheyne Walk is marvellous, he would never have failed to do such a thing.’

He shrugged. ‘Clearly not as marvellous as you think. Barty, come here, sit down, please let me explain. I know it was – remiss of me—’

‘Remiss! You call that remiss. A piece of the most dangerous, wicked deception, while the person I love probably best in the world—’

‘I thought that was me—’

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘No, it is not you.’

‘Please. Let me try and explain. It was only because I love you so much. I wanted to—’

‘Laurence, that was not about love. I’m afraid you don’t know anything about love. I’m going to my room now, I can’t ask poor Mills to take me all that way again. But I do warn you, if you come near me I shall scream and tell your servants that you’re raping me. Goodnight, Laurence. I – I really don’t think I want to see you ever again.’

He had thought – of course – that she would get over it, that it was a passing tantrum, that she would forgive him, that he could win her round. Convincing him otherwise was the hardest thing she had ever done. For weeks, as usual, he bombarded her with telephone calls, flowers, waited outside for her in his car, sat for hours in reception at Lytton House. Eventually she told him that she would inform the police he was pestering her.

‘I don’t want to marry you, Laurence. Don’t you understand? I don’t want anything more to do with you. Please, please leave me alone.’

And then the other, uglier assaults began, the near-suicide threats, the declarations that he was going to get in his boat and sail away in it, that he was unable to work and the bank was on the verge of collapse, that he was having investigations into a physical condition which might be fatal – all complete fabrications, designed to frighten her, to force her into submission.

Somehow she managed to hold firm, but it was quite extraordinarily difficult and disturbing.

Because, of course, she was still deeply concerned for him, and in a way, she was still terribly in love with him.

She was greatly comforted and distracted through this time however, by the publication of
Brilliant Twilight
. With some misgivings, encouraged by the modest orders of some of the more important booksellers – Brentanos had expressed great interest in it and ordered twenty copies and three posters – Stuart Bailey had decided on an initial print run of two and a half thousand.