Black Silk (36 page)

“William.” Submit set her pen down as she rose from the table. “Come in. I’m so glad you could come.”

She invited him into a sunny parlor that spilled with gentle light. “Thank you, Mills.” She spoke to the short, slightly hunched man beside William. “Would you bring us some tea?” Turning to William, she said, “Come sit over here.”

Submit directed William Channing-Downes to a small sofa and chair set into the curve of a large bay window. The view gave onto a lovely little provincial street. It was lined with trees, not streetlights. Beyond the street was a river that skirted the edge of a large, manicured grassy park. Submit considered the view the best part of the upper-story flat she rented in Cambridge off Jesus Green. She had a staff of exactly two, a retired porter whose duties she dignified by the title of butler and a girl from town who doubled as lady’s maid and cook.

William looked around as he sat. Submit didn’t mind. She gave him time. It was a nice, middle-class flat, perhaps even a trace more genteel than that. Though all William would notice, she didn’t doubt, was that it did not speak of
much wealth. Nonetheless, she was content here. Content, at least, so long as she kept her musings and recollections off Graham—a yet oddly painful subject that she tried to relegate to her fiction alone, where she might more safely sort him and herself out.

“Serial doing all right by you then?” he asked with a smirk.

“The new one is about to finish and never did bring as much money as the other. But, yes, I’m doing all right.” She smiled. “As I understand you are. Congratulations, by the way.”

Only the preceding Thursday, William had been granted a royal warrant that gave him the full honors of a younger son. The word “Lord” would appear before his name. The Lord and Lady William Channing-Downes would be announced, would go in to dinner with the younger sons and daughters of the marquesses of England, behind the earls.

He looked out the window. “Yes. Thank you.” He said this with no enthusiasm, obviously not overjoyed. It was, of course, not quite what he had wanted. The privilege of younger sons did not pass down to offspring. It was a lifetime, not a hereditary, honor; but then William had no children as yet. He spoke what would be his chief objection: “It comes with no property, no land.”

After a due moment, to acknowledge his disappointment, Submit said, “I have something to say that may help with that.” His face turned. She had his vague, insouciant attention. She took a deep breath. “Of course, there are no promises with this, but, well, I want to get past our disagreement, William. I want to clean up the stray ends of my life as quickly as possible so I may start anew.

“If we can come to terms,” she continued, “here and now, I’m willing to step aside, leave you a clear path to Motmarche.”

He rose up straighter in his chair. His eyes narrowed.

“I want the right to take some things from the living quarters,” Submit said. “A piece or two of the furniture I like, some things of Henry’s. Then we divide up the other assets. I want mine in cash.”

“Why?”

Submit blinked. “I’m planning to travel.”

“No, why are you offering to help me now?”

She paused. “Let’s just say I no longer feel I deserve Motmarche so very much more than you do.” She offered a faint smile. “Humility,” she said. “I feel a little less righteous. And the absolute necessity of getting on with my life.”

He answered only with a very unhumble shrug, as if to say: “Well, yes. Of course. Finally.”

But he was not so cavalier as he pretended. When the tea arrived a moment later, she caught him glancing at her over the tray, taking the offered cup, stirring, sitting back with the cup, stirring some more. He didn’t drink, but eyed her with suspicion.

“Motmarche is not yours to give,” he ventured.

“Drop the lawsuit contesting the will. Living in it becomes my dower right. I’ll sign a rent agreement, yours for all your natural days for the rent of one pound sterling—that would make it yours, in fact.”

His mouth pressed into a bitter, distrustful line. “You’re doing this on purpose,” he said.

“What on purpose?”

“The ruling came down just this morning. How did you find out so soon?”

“What ruling?”

“The will, along with Henry’s posthumous wishes, was overturned this morning. Tate will no doubt get in touch with you today or tomorrow. I took the train right after the hearing; I was there.”

Submit felt her blood shift, rush, before the actual fact
had penetrated every corner of her brain. “You’re saying that Henry was found to be not of sound mind?”

“
Non compos mentis
, dear old Henry.” William spoke with bemusement and a degree of ironic satisfaction. “The crowning blow being the box—what a dirty little box.” He looked at her with arch surprise. “The box that my attorneys finally subpoenaed last week. The courts took one look at that, added it to a terribly young wife, an uxorious will, written in obsessive language, well—” He waved his hand. “There was little doubt where Henry’s mind was when it came to you—”

Submit stood up. “Oh, William.” She wanted to weep, throttle him, throw something, though less for either of their sakes than Henry’s. “What have you done?”

William set the untouched tea down beside him as he stretched his arms out along the back of the sofa. “Hoisted myself, I think—if I can believe the sincerity of your offer—on my own petard.”

Submit turned toward the window, staring out. He was hoisted indeed, for without the will or a title, William would get nothing at all. She herself would get only her dower share, a third of Henry’s unentailed estates, which would not include the seat of a marquessdom.

For Motmarche, without the will providing for her living there, would revert to the crown, to be sold off by pieces. Or given to some distant kin or unrelated stranger for favors rendered—who would then probably run it to ground. It took a certain amount of sacrifice these days to keep such a vast property in good repair and operating in the black.

They sat in silence. When the butler came to get the tea, he gestured to William’s untouched cup. “Your Lordship?”

William didn’t answer. Submit turned.

The man had to repeat himself. “Your Lordship? Shall I take your cup?”

William looked up blankly, as if the man were talking to someone else.

“The cup, Your Lordship.”

The form of address registered. William glanced at Submit, giving her a faint, half-crooked smile. As he handed the cup over, carefully so as not to spill a drop, he spoke with irony, but also with a measure of pleasure, despite himself: “Yes, His Lordship is finished with his cup.”

Almost two hundred miles away, Graham remained at Netham with Rosalyn, the wounded, beautiful bird—the albatross who simply wouldn’t go away. The doctors had recommended she not be “subjected to a move for a while.”

These same doctors had given her weeks of crying and blank staring a new and chic name: neurasthenia. Even in illness, Rosalyn was at the forefront of fashion and trends. They fed her disease on laudanum and “quiet recourse.” Something must have worked. By mid-October, she was more herself. She was a bit jumpy and had a tendency to sleep a great deal and to cry now and then for no reason she would share, but she had regained control. She remained at Netham. Graham had his own personal diagnosis of her symptoms—he lived in mortal fear that she was pregnant.

“No contraception is foolproof,” he mentioned.

She only glared.

“Could you be, do you suppose?”

Her lips tightened.

Graham was at a loss.

Why was it, he wondered, that a man could make love to a woman and yet, with their clothes on and with his having certainly half-interest in the answer, this question became indelicate?

The matter was waved away with a peeved impatience he prayed was denial.

Life went on. The end of the month found Rosalyn still planted firmly in his house, for the very good reason that by now she had nowhere else to go. Gerald had indeed filed for divorce. Graham had been named co-respondent. He’d been dragooned into the courtroom and up onto the witness dock, where he once more got to go through the routine of incredibly personal questions.
Yes, I have had sexual relations with Mrs. Schild. Oh, tons and tons. We’ve done it from the rafters, the chandeliers, in the cellar, in the coal bin. We’re regular wonders.
…

Though not lately. Graham hadn’t so much as touched her since the fateful night. He’d even moved from his own rooms when she had wandered in, expecting, no doubt, some sort of a resumption. As far as Graham was concerned, there would never be a resumption. Among other reasons, Submit was gone, and he held this against Rosalyn; her fine timing for a nervous breakdown. The truth was, he wanted Submit and no one else, though she was so far from what seemed his lot as to be off the map of possibility. Graham’s life took on the distinct prospect of a monastic existence, his home the prospect of a perfectly safe place for convalescing women.

So there they were, eight weeks and three days after the episode on the stairs, a very civilized and domestic-looking couple in his front drawing room. Rosalyn sat with a book and a cup of tea, strong with milk. He sat with a stack of ledger sheets and coffee with cinnamon—until she got up and with cold fingers unhooked one earpiece of his reading glasses (new since October—and by the drastic improvement they brought, a sure sign he had needed them much sooner). The glasses fell askew across his nose. He frowned at her, a cockeyed countenance, still a youngish man with inappropriate eyeglasses.

“I feel awful,” she said.

“So they say.” He repositioned the flexible wire and glass and went back to the tally sheets he was reading.

She left perhaps two minutes of silence. “She’s a missed boat, you know.”

He looked over the top of the eyeglasses.

“If you wanted a woman like that, you had to have made the decision twenty years ago.” With a sad kind of contradicting spitefulness, she added, “I could make you happy, Graham. Let’s go to London. The opera is opening with
I Puritani—
” Realizing that was hardly an appealing prospect, she spoke very softly, “You don’t even know where she is.”

This was absolutely true. She hadn’t written. She wasn’t at the posting house. She wasn’t in London—Tate had volunteered that much in his stiff reply to Graham’s letter. Graham had gone so far as to write to her family home in Yorkshire. An elder brother had answered curtly that he hadn’t seen his sister in two years. Even Pease only heard from her by mail, the manuscripts having differing London postmarks, never being sent from the same post office twice. But all inquiries went unrewarded. Submit Channing-Downes had evaporated off the face of the earth.

Graham let the tally sheets fall onto the table beside him. He sat there, staring at the room over the tops of his glasses—a room he no longer loved, seeing Rosalyn, a woman he never had. She looked reduced through the lenses of the reading spectacles, a small, beautiful, frightened woman. Her lovely face was pale, her bright eyes both accusing and terrified. She couldn’t give up wanting the fun of the moment, he thought, yet she seemed guilty and alarmed at all the hurt left in the wake of this philosophy.

He got up. “I’m going to London,” he said. From the doorway, he added, “I’m going to get you a house and set up a modest income for you. Once I have things arranged, I’ll
come get you. Then we are going to part company. I will take care of you, if that is what is required, but I don’t want to live with you, Rosalyn. I don’t have to sacrifice my life for yours.” He looked at her. “You
can’t
make me happy. Only I can. Or at least I can pursue happiness a little more aggressively—an American ideal I think I must have learned from your American husband. If I’m going to be miserable, I might as well be miserable with my objective in clear sight. I’m going to find her. Now, if you want to do something else, you better decide right away. I’m leaving within the hour.”

Missed boats. Unseen opportunities. Coincidences. For once, Graham caught one of these right. He had a small bag packed, his hat and coat in hand, and was standing in his own front hallway, when—by perhaps three minutes—he was found home. A special messenger from the Home Secretary was ushered in his front door. The man served him with a letter full of seals and ribbons. More legalities, Graham thought, and groaned.

When he slit the page open and read it, however, his hat slid from his hand. “My God.” He fell into a chair. He read the letter, then read it again. “My God” was all he could say each time.

It took him half an hour, sitting in a chair in the hallway, to absorb the contents of that letter. Though the more he read it, the more it made sense. When he finally stood, tucking it into his breast pocket, he was filled with wonder. He didn’t know what to think—if the letter was manna from heaven or the final blow that would make Submit want to kill him outright.

Graham arrived at Arnold Tate’s offices at Inner Temple, thinking simply to hold the barrister against the wall until he explained where she’d gone. The man had to know.

Such force wasn’t necessary, however. Tate willingly gave
up the information that could only wither Graham’s spirits. Henry’s will had been thrown out. Submit’s dower was being converted to cash; that was how she wanted it. No land. What was still a fairly remarkable sum had already been transferred into her accounts. It was money which, had the English courts realized, might not have been made so readily available to her, since she was taking it out of the country.

“What?”

“Didn’t you know? She is leaving for America.”

“When?”

“Why, this week, I believe. Tomorrow or the next day.”

“Where is she now?”

“Motmarche, of course. She has gone to pack. The court has recognized the house contains certain possessions of her private union with the marquess.”