Black Silk (24 page)

In the distance, Submit could see more dovecotes, a little pond covered in water lilies, and a funny little building, a follylike gazebo by a lake. White fences and horses ran along one side. A small, select society, the women spread out in bright dresses, the gentlemen in more somber tones, was sitting inside the folly, at a long picnic table. The tablecloth, red and yellow and orange and green, stood out as brightly as the people’s clothes.

“What are you working on?” Graham asked.

“Pardon?”

Graham smiled at her. “What is it that Arnold thinks you are working on too hard?”

“Oh.” Submit bent her head. From within the dovecotes, as the threesome passed, came the soft clamor of busy, purring trills, followed by a swell of laughter from the folly.

She had told no one the details of the wonderful and lucrative new project that was taking up so much of her time. Partly out of a kind of possessiveness, to have it completely for her own. She was finding out something very new about Henry. He liked adventure, foolish, physical, outlandish adventure. At least he admired it in a kind of backhanded way in print. So did she. And partly she had kept quiet because there was no one to tell. Even Arnold would very likely not approve of the marquess’s wife indulging in frivolous fictional escapades. Yet Submit realized, as she walked beside Graham, that she could tell him, that she would even like to.

For the moment, she held to the generalization she had already given Arnold. She shrugged. “Some of Henry’s old notes, some articles he’d half done. If I finish them, the publisher has promised to pay me the sum he and Henry agreed upon.”

“Aha.” Graham nodded politely. “That should keep you busy then.”

They walked across the grass, Arnold remaining unnaturally quiet, resigned to his place a few steps behind. The
folly ahead materialized fully over a bramble of grey willow and bryony. Submit paused, unwillingly impressed. It was one of those incredibly contrived vistas that nonetheless was simply beautiful. Someone had picked just the right rise of land, the perfect angle on the lake, then erected stone by stone a fantasy of classical form. It was a miniature, whimsical reconstruction of ancient Rome in decline. The crumbling walls seemed to be held together by little more than ivy. Engrossed, conversational voices came from between leaning Doric columns. From under a sloping entablature, hoots of laughter followed. These were the sounds of a careless social gathering whose members were inured to beauty and complacent toward their own security.

Submit entered with Graham and Arnold through a doorway with no door. Inside, the building showed its strength. The decay and crumble were an illusion, supported by cantilevers and beams barely discernible through vegetation and architectural disguise. As they entered, several people turned.

“Graham! There you are!” A heavy woman with a cumbersome body, a chest that could have graced the cutwater of a battleship, got up from the table. The table was long, running the diameter of the circular folly. It was set with flowers, wine, silver, and leftover food, all on a bright, striped tablecloth; a gay, bucolic disregard for formality. “We’ve been wondering where you got off to,” the woman said to Graham, but her eyes settled on Submit.

In fact, a number of faces turned to Submit, as if they were trying to fathom her connection to the earl.

Graham established it for them. “My cousin, Lady Motmarche. And Arnold Tate, a barrister at the Queen’s Bench.” People peeked around Graham and Submit. “Lady Stone,” Graham introduced the heavyset woman, then nodded toward a man seated at the table. “Sir Gilbert’s wife.” Several gentlemen stood.

Graham made more introductions, names that passed in a blur. Lord and Lady This. Sir Something and Lady That. Until he came to a guest Submit had simply not expected to see. “Of course, you know William Channing-Downes.”

William was seated—he didn’t bother to stand—at the far end, smiling his knowing, superior smile from behind a lady with a large fan. He leaned forward, tipped his hand, as if he were wearing a hat.

Submit’s heart began to thump against the wall of her chest. She couldn’t help but throw her host a look. William was so very comfortable at Graham’s table.

“Why, Graham, she’s lovely,” the chesty matron declared. She took Submit’s hand, leading her to the table. Submit was uncomfortable hearing the word “lovely” applied to herself. It simply wasn’t true. But the woman went on. “To keep such a pretty cousin all to yourself, Graham.” The woman glanced at Submit’s dress. “And a widow, too. You simply must get to know everyone.”

Graham turned Submit over to the woman and sat by an empty chair at William’s end. There were more introductions. There had to be fifty people in the outdoor house. Half a dozen Submit knew from Mrs. Schild’s. Oddly, Submit noted, Mrs. Schild herself was not about. She found herself looking at the empty chair beside Graham, not certain if he meant for her to take it or if the American woman were about to arrive.

Ultimately, people moved down, placing Submit in the chair next to the vacant one, leaving a telling space between herself and her host. Arnold was placed at the far other end. Submit looked to him longingly, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Well,” a chicken-beaked man beside her said, as he pushed a glass of wine into her hands, “we were just discussing the likelihood of truth in what that supposed scien
tist gave to the world last month, the claim that we all came from monkeys.” Several people laughed heartily.

“Darwin?” Submit asked.

“You know of him? Good!”

“What do you think?”

One slightly inebriated young man in the middle of the table gave his opinion by making a few monkey sounds.
Chee, chee, chee.

“I think the theory of natural selection is valid.”

“Geoffrey,” the man called to another over a woman’s head, “you have another on your side.” The table broke into more heated debate.

Submit glanced at Graham. He was looking at her, not taking part. Such a look. Wonder, pleasure, curiosity. Too much interest for her to be comfortable. She looked away.

The man beside her patted her hand. “It’s always nice,” he said, “to see a widow getting out and about. Nothing so dismal as a member of the gentler sex collapsed in a houseful of black-draped gloom.”

Submit felt black-draped gloom descend before her eyes. She had as much in common with these people as she did with a jungle of simians. They laughed too loudly, made light of serious topics, and several of the men—it seemed a popular affectation—wore reams of watch chains and bushels of rings. They could in no way compete with the women, however. Midmorning found them all dressed out in eyelet and feathers and fans.

These women, from time to time, gave her cool glances. Sometimes not so cool. One attractive brunette threw several heated little glances between Submit and her host. A young girl with a pointy chin and a pouty mouth gave her an overall puzzled look, then glanced away. It was a gesture of relief and dismissal.

The introductory warmth lasted about sixty seconds.
Submit reached for an orange, the only thing in the little folly that seemed even remotely friendly besides Arnold, who was too far away, and Graham, who was too close.

After a few minutes’ discussion of Darwin and the paper he’d read to the Linnaean Society, William leaned toward Graham and speared a cold piece of roast pheasant with a fork. He talked across three other people to ask, “Do you believe species can transmute, Gray?”

Graham looked up. “Everything changes. Why not? I suppose.”

“But why monkeys? Why not”—William paused and glanced toward Submit—“spiders, for instance?”

A man at William’s left laughed.

William went on. “Do you remember, Gray, those little jars Henry used to have?”

“Jars?”

“In his study on the shelf. Every manner of thing.”

Graham was staring off, hardly paying attention. “Yes, vaguely.”

“In one of the jars was an American spider. A tiny little thing.” He shifted his glance pointedly toward Submit. “A black widow.” He added, “Do you remember the jar, Submit?” William smiled at her.

She only nodded as she sectioned the orange.

But other people had begun to understand his game. The lady with the fan grew silent. The man beside Submit turned in fascination, his ready attention waiting for someone’s discomfort—or better yet, an argument, a fight. Down the table, voices laughed, counterpointing the ugly little quiet that had settled between William and Submit.

“Deadly,” William continued. “Tiny, delicate, yet it can kill you with one bite. Or certainly make you very sick.” He added gruesomely, “Though a bite would kill a child.” He turned fully to face Submit. “Is the jar still there on the shelf?”

She looked up at him, wondering when someone would stop him. “So far as I know.”

“They mate,” William said. He gestured with his knife. “Then they eat the male. That’s where they get their name. A regular femme fatale, don’t you think?”

“I think,” Graham interrupted by stealing a piece of pheasant off William’s plate, “that you, like a great many people, are a little shortsighted when it comes to nature. The spider in the jar is
dead
. Whatever small poison she had was apparently inadequate in the overall scheme of things.”

“Small poison,” William repeated, glaring at him. “Not so small, if it’s you writhing from the bite. Or,” he added, “dead or dying in her web—”

Graham laughed. “Have some wine, William. It’ll ease the buzzing in your head.”

Submit glanced at her rescuer. If one could call it a rescue to be labeled inadequate and compared to a dead spider in a jar. Graham had sat back into a kind of characteristic pose, his arm on the chair, his jaw balanced in three fingers and the heel of his palm. He was looking right at her with an interested stare. She minded this interest all at once, as if she were some specimen, some new species to watch. And she minded all over again that Graham didn’t take her side more strongly against William in other things, that he gave him a place to live in London, invited him to his table, then laughed when he attacked her over lunch.

Rosalyn Schild was the one to break this up. She came through the doorless entryway, breathless, at somewhat more than a graceful walk. “Graham,” she said, “I think Charles has put Claire’s eye out.”

Graham stood. “Excuse me.” He was out the door like a shot.

Rosalyn didn’t follow but greeted everyone warmly. When she sat down beside Submit, however, she did a quick double take, then recovered with applaudable sangfroid.
“Why, Submit, how nice to see you.” The gregarious woman rolled her eyes and leaned closer, as if she and Submit were old, confiding friends. “His children,” she whispered. Her eyes made another theatrical swing toward the ceiling. “Horrid, horrid, horrid,” she pronounced.

Submit saw Graham only briefly again that day, just before she retired.

He stopped her on the stairs. She was going up as he was coming down. “I’m so very glad you came,” he said. “I’d love for you to stay longer than just the weekend.”

“I don’t think so.” To change the subject, she asked, “Is your daughter all right?”

He shrugged. “The doctor put a patch on her eye. We have to wait.”

“It’s very bad then?”

“
She’s
very bad. She and Charles both. They were fighting. Every time they do something like this, I want to banish them to a boarding school, a foreign country, as far away as I can put them from me.”

Submit would have imagined such, that he would be admittedly not very fond of children. “You don’t like them very much?”

He laughed. “I adore them. You obviously haven’t been around children much. They’re all like that. Monsters. Till they get old enough to hide what they really feel and want and think.”

She smiled a little at his cynicism. “How old are they?”

“Thirteen.”

She waited for another age, for numbers to fall into an order. Her anticipation must have shown.

“And thirteen,” he added. “They’re twins.”

She couldn’t keep the unpleasantness of this surprise from showing on her face. With distaste, the whole business at Scotland Yard came to mind, the poor girl with the twins.

“Well, I’m not responsible for every pair, you know,” he said. “Just one set.”

When she looked, she found him smiling, privately laughing at her reaction. She smiled, too. “No, of course not. But it’s an ugly coincidence.”

“It’s no coincidence, I’m sure. The girl found herself with twins. It’s common knowledge I’d fathered twins once. Most everyone knows I have. I was sure you did, too.”

“No.” She shook her head. Sincerely, she told him, “There are the hugest gaps in what I know about you.”

He made one of his wide, fabulous smiles: white teeth, inch-long dimples down his cheeks, the dark, down-slanted eyes crinkled at the edges in friendly, warm regard. “Stay and find out.”

That night, Submit was looking through a handful of Henry’s notes she had brought. Pease expected the next episode by the following Wednesday.

Everything was always rushed with him. He was running a bare episode ahead and wanted her to give him more as quickly as she could, presumably to allow for her loss of interest, her loss of faculty, or her demise. Pease wanted the finished book in his hand. Submit obliged, but wished she had more time and leisure to go through everything more carefully.

She read the words, “Ronmoor had inherited a folly. A real, literal, architectural folly on a lake….”

She stared out into space for a moment, realizing suddenly why she had known the room downstairs vaguely and the little desk with its drawer particularly well. Ronmoor had given an upstairs maid money from that desk drawer—in Henry’s notes—last week. She began to leaf through Henry’s pages.

“A tall, charming man with a predisposition for easy women, fast horses, and trouble…”

“…in the center of a cliquish little group of the more extravagant and outrageous of London upper-class society…”

“Rather surprisingly, Ronmoor had legitimate issue, whose birth was, like everything else in Ronmoor’s life, twice as difficult, twice as much as needed—the children were twins.”