Grahame, Lucia (29 page)

"If I stay longer with you tonight," he said, his words
seeming to reach me through a thick mist, "it will be on one condition.
You will not balk at
anything
I ask of you. I leave it to you. I will go
now and count tonight to your account, since, although you were occasionally
dilatory, you acquitted yourself well enough, for the most part. Or I will
stay, on
my
conditions—but at
your
wish. It rests with you. Do I
stay or go?"

"Stay," I whispered.

I swayed and jingled as he led me back to the hearthside and laid
me down upon the pillows.

"Undress me," he commanded when we were stretched out
before the fire. "Slowly. As slowly as you can."

I moved closer to him and began to unfasten the buttons of his
waistcoast.

He sighed.

"Don't rush," he whispered. "I can feel how eager
you are, but try to control yourself. Take your time."

It was maddening to force myself to that unhurried pace, but in
the end it only sharpened my hunger. As I contemplated the climactic pleasures
in store—who could have said how long it would take to achieve them?—I could
not help savoring the small but no less sweet ones immediately at hand. The
slight drag against my skin of the fine wool that clothed him, more teasing
even than I had imagined it;
the almost imperceptible fragrance of
lavender that wafted from his shirt, the hands which lay so lightly upon my
waist as I absorbed the knowledge that the task he had set for me was not an
obstacle to fulfillment but a means of enhancing it.

Yet I had unbuttoned only his waistcoat and his shirt when he told
me to stop. He drew back from me a little. The very aura of controlled desire
he radiated made me long to submerge myself in the impersonal heat and
forgetfulness that his still presence next to me both promised and withheld.

I moved perhaps a centimeter closer to him.

"No," he said.

He began, in his calm, unhasty way, to remove his remaining
clothing himself. I steadied my breath a little and watched the firelight move
like a sculptor's fingers over his cool, hard body.

At last he leaned over me, but without touching me.

"You're so compliant tonight," he said almost tenderly.
"You must be very hungry for your freedom,
mon fleur du miel."

I felt a twist of sadness. For an instant, I thought he had used
Frederick's nickname for me. But he had called me something quite different—a
flower, not of evil, but of sweetness... honey.

He brought his hand to my cheek and stroked it softly. I closed my
eyes. Only the sudden sharp intake of my breath could have told him of the
effect of that light touch.

He bent his head. I caught the scents of mint and smoke and my own
secrets as his mouth moved close to mine.

I tipped my head back and opened my lips.

How long I had resisted those kisses! Now I craved his mouth,
wanting to savor and prolong every sensation that could melt away my frozen,
imprisoning armor of misery and isolation.

He barely grazed my lips with his.

Then he pulled himself to his knees and gently coaxed me into the
same position, facing him.

Keeping his lips lightly on mine, he reached out and took my
shoulders gently to bring me closer. My breasts brushed his chest with every
long, shivering breath I took.

"You are free now," whispered my husband at last,
releasing me, "to do as you like.... How will you use your liberty?"

For an answer, I put my arms around his neck, sank back upon the
pillows, pulling him down to me, and brought my wild mouth to his.

I knew I was lost; his revenge was already complete. But then he
betrayed himself; his kisses grew as hot and urgent as my own; his arms tightened
around me, he gave a small, gasping moan, and in that instant I saw how I might
turn his own unsparing weapons against him.

With a reckless exhilaration I had never known before, I seized
upon the catechism of secret lore with which my grandmother had inculcated me,
the practice of which I had begun and refined with Frederick.

As my husband's lips and tongue melded gloriously with mine, I
moved one hand downward. My husband gripped my straying wrist. I caught his
lower lip between my teeth and nipped it tenderly as a warning. He drew in his
breath sharply and released my hand.

I found and tested his desire for me. And then I let my hand move
further, to enclose, with the utmost gentleness, the soft rounds of delicate,
pendulous flesh I had never ventured to handle. I pressed my fingers there with
the assurance born of the harlot's knowledge and felt the violence of his
response. I moved my fingers further.

My husband's arms fell away from me. His head dropped among the
pillows we shared. He lay back, his eyes closed, his fine, long sinews tensed.

An even deeper thrill began to take possession of me as I observed
his efforts to master himself.

At first the thought of going beyond this had seemed repugnant,
but now the lust for power proved too much for me. I let my hand fall away and
watched him press his lips together hard as if to curb a plea.

I waited a few seconds, and then I moved downward, between his
hard thighs, and bent over him. Touching him lightly with my tongue, I lifted
his hips gently and laid another pillow beneath them. My lips and tongue began
to perform every act my hands had rehearsed before. I listened with maddening
satisfaction to his sobbing breath as I laid my hands inside his thighs and
pressed them further apart.

Nothing deterred me: His scent and his skin were fresh and
inviting; to hear him groan softly and to feel him shudder as my fearless
tongue explored him only spurred me on.

And then he broke free and sat up, panting. I knelt facing him.
Frozen, we stared at each other like sleepwalkers jolted from their trance.

I watched the dazed expression ebb slowly from his face to be
replaced by something like anger.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, he was watching me with the cruel and
wary eyes of a lion tamer.

"Come here," he said.

I inched closer.

He took my wrists and brought them together above my head, holding
them in one hand. The other hand slid downward and began to play with me. He
had regained his self-control, but within seconds he brought me to the limits of
mine. He took his hand away. I shut my eyes again, knowing his were still open
and upon me. Tears began to burn against my lashes as I strained toward him.

"Please," I whispered.

"Please what?" he demanded softly.

"Please, I want you," I said, but I knew I had failed
him in some way.

He brought his lips to my ear as he began fingering me delicately
once again.

"Use my name," he said.

I resisted for only a second or two. He moved his hand away.

"Please, Anthony," I gasped. It was the ultimate defeat.

He pushed me down upon the pillows, jammed my thighs further apart
with his knees, and drove himself into me. I started to cry out against the
force of his thrusts, but my cry was transformed before it left my lips as my
pleasure shot toward its apex. He laughed softly and withdrew from me so
abruptly that I had to choke back a whimper of loss. My body lifted itself to
him.

I called his name, pleading.

When he took me again, it was even more roughly than before. The
earlier taste he had given me only sharpened my hunger for this. All my
pretenses had fled.

"Look at me," he said, and when I did, he was smiling
down at me, but it was as much a smile of triumph as of anything else. I knew
my own face was transparent. My eyes closed again, as he dragged me downward: I
was falling like Lucifer, but falling into heaven, not out of it.

I awoke to the sound of that slow, steady breathing. The fire
still burned upon the hearth. I could not have slept, I supposed, for more than
five or ten minutes.

I stared up at the ceiling, and I thought of my husband, to whom
all that had just passed had been merely an exercise in power and revenge, and
I thought of Frederick, whom, even at my most abandoned, I had never embraced
quite so passionately. Frederick, to whom I had never given all that this unloved,
unloving stranger had won from me.

It was too painful to contemplate—it led to the familiar thoughts
of all those other things I ought to have done long ago and had not. They
began, and ended, as always, with my failure to rouse myself from my own sorrows
in time to have saved Frederick, to whom I'd sworn my love, from that dreadful,
sordid death.

My husband stirred. I glanced at him cautiously, longing to lose
myself in him again and wishing simultaneously that this night had never been.
I would have given anything, then, to find myself back in that first shabby
Parisian garret with my laughing artist, who had loved me, even if he had
perhaps never roused me to quite that same pitch.

I had often thought that if I could imagine the circumstances
vividly enough, if I could make every detail perfectly concrete, if I could
somehow concentrate my mind sufficiently, I might, by the sheer force of will,
be able to transport myself back into that old life... and mend it.

I closed my eyes and tried to let the studio take shape— the
stacks of canvasses leaning against the wall, the cold northern light pouring
through the windows, along with a little bite of chilly air. The fire was
burning and the room was heavy with warmth. The familiar odor of garlic drifted
upward from Madame Lemestre's kitchen below to mingle with the heady aroma of
oil of cloves, which Frederick used to keep his paint moist and plastic.

I was almost there....

And then Frederick stood before me—wasted, mournful, and
accusatory, the river mud clinging to his grave clothes and to his tarnished
hair. I tried to move toward him; he lifted a skeletal hand to arrest me in my
steps.

"Oh, what have you been doing,
mon fleur du mah"
he
cried in a strangled voice. And then, with a look of unspeakable reproach and
sorrow, he drifted away, through the high, draughty window of my past, to
dissolve among the snow-covered rooftops beyond, a lonely, restless,
disappointed shadow.

That old, sweet love could not save me now.

"Oh, Frederick!" His name broke from my lips in a low,
raw whisper, a whisper of resignation and farewell.

My husband pulled away from me and sat up.

I pressed my hand to my mouth. To think what he had uncovered in
me that night! I was well on the way to proving the truth of his cruel
predictions.
And then what will become of the cast-off Lady Camwell?

"Perhaps you need to be alone," he said.

I did not refute him.

He got up calmly from the bed and began to dress. I longed for him
either to hurry and go or to change his mind and stay, but he did neither. He
was infuriatingly methodical, but he appeared abstracted and thoughtful as he
secured each button.

Finally he stood over me with his shoes in one hand and his tie in
the other.

He must have seen the anguish in my face.

"I want you to remember one thing," he said in a very
quiet, steady voice. "It was not my faithlessness which brought you to
this."

It was insupportable—to be accused of faithlessness by one husband
from beyond the grave, and by the other, of the faithless spirit in which I had
taken my marriage vows.

"Get out," I said in a harsh whisper. And then, as a
final fillip, I added, "Anthony."

Of course, it had no effect on him. He merely turned and left
silently, still enveloped in that inviolable air of dignity.

When he was gone, I ripped off the bells and flung the flimsy
broken chains in the direction of the door through which he had vanished. I
tried to yank off the diamond choker as well, but the clasp did not yield, in
spite of its alleged weakness, and in the end I removed it in the usual way and
restored it neatly to its little red leather tomb.

By the time I descended the stairway the following morning, after
taking my breakfast in bed, my husband had departed for London. The ensuing
fortnight dragged itself by in leaden shoes.

He did not communicate with me. I knew not when I might expect the
pleasure of his company again. I was bored to distraction.

None of the scholarly tomes in my husband's vast library could
hold my attention. I wandered about the grounds with my sketchbook, making
little drawings in a desultory fashion, abandoning them before they were
complete, and reviewing all too frequently that last night with my husband.

I had been unnecessarily cruel.