The Gilded Cage (23 page)

This time, when she brought her knee up, she caught him enough so that he shifted his weight, and she pushed him with all her strength and jumped up. She ran for the door.

But he was behind her, forcing her against the door. Her chin banged against it, and the pain sent tears to her eyes. “Please, Lawrence,” she begged.

“Please,” he mimicked, tenderly tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

She relaxed for an instant, then tensed her muscles when his fingers moved against her neck. “You liked this once,” he said.

“Yes,” she said through a constricted throat. When she felt that he had relaxed his hold a bit, she pushed away slightly and hammered at the door. “Marguerite!” she screamed.

His hand clamped over her mouth, and he dragged her backward, away from the door, while she tried to hit him from behind. There was no talking now, no time for it and no breath, for they were locked in struggle. His grip on her arms was powerful, and it hurt. He twisted them behind her back, then held her wrists together with one hand. He seemed to do it so easily, even though she struggled.

Finally, he took her hair in one hand and tilted back her head. He spoke softly in her ear. “Columbine, you don't understand. I don't want to hurt you at all. Do you understand?” His tongue licked her ear, and she shuddered with revulsion.

“You see how you tremble?” he asked. He licked her ear again, and she sobbed a great sob that wrenched her belly.

He put a hand over her mouth. His knee came up and pushed between her legs. And she saw the door open, and Marguerite standing in the doorway. Lawrence's hand dropped immediately.

“She was hysterical—” he started.

“Liar!” Marguerite screamed, and she was flying across the room, fragile, tiny Marguerite, launching herself at him in a flurry of teeth and nails.

He dropped his arms from around Columbine, who fell back, her knees crumpling underneath her. She pushed herself up and went after Lawrence, who was backing away toward the door underneath the fury of Marguerite's attack. A long, bloody scratch went from his ear to the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were murderous.

“Bitches,” he spat.

“Get out!” Marguerite screeched, and Columbine picked up Lawrence's coat and hat and shoved them at him, pushing him out into the hall. Together the women managed to open the front door and push him through it. He stumbled and fell to his knees on the stone stairs, and they banged the door closed and locked it, resting against it and taking deep shuddering breaths before Columbine burst into tears and hurled herself into Marguerite's arms, arms she once thought so childish, so slender, and now felt so strong.

W
HEN
M
ARGUERITE MOVED
into the house Edwin found for her, she forgot everything she'd known before. She settled into luxury as though she'd been born for it. Now she rose languidly at ten, rather than seven. She did not leap out of bed to dress hurriedly in the cold. Her bedroom was warm as toast, and she merely stretched and burrowed further underneath her satin coverlet. Her maid carried in a tray that contained a silver coffeepot, rolls, jam, and fresh fruit. She would leave the tray on the bed and bring in a vase full of roses. Edwin sent them every morning.

After picking at her breakfast, Marguerite would bathe. Then she would choose one of her many new dresses—they were beautiful, but Edwin promised that next season they'd be from Paris—and take her carriage to Toby's for her singing lesson. She was making great progress, he said. On days she had no lesson, she went for a walk up Madison Avenue. She thought about getting a dog. When she returned, she changed again, for Edwin usually arrived for lunch. If he did, they would usually eat in the dining room, a long luncheon with soup and lobster salad and turbot, sometimes a roast beef if Edwin instructed the cook the day before. Then they would go upstairs to her bedroom. And then Edwin would leave for his office again and Marguerite would perhaps bathe again, or read
Harper's Bazar
to see the new fashions from Paris, or nap. Then she would begin to think about what to wear for dinner.

It was a perfect life. She reveled in her luxury. She licked jam off her fingers and luxuriated in bath water that was always the perfect temperature. She rubbed silk against her cheeks and opened long jewelers' boxes and squealed at their contents. And she got to make love every day, sometimes twice a day. Even though Edwin was not as good a lover as Horatio, she still enjoyed it, very much.

Weeks passed, and Edwin still came, but he sometimes skipped lunch and only made love. In the evenings now, he often arrived after a dinner to which she had not been invited. Their evenings became the evenings of a domestic married couple; Marguerite did embroidery by the fire while Edwin finished a brandy and then looked at her meaningfully and rose to go upstairs. He claimed that now he knew what it was to be domestically inclined. There was nothing he liked better, he said, than to sit in the quiet parlor with her on his knee. Marguerite called him an old stick-in-the-mud. She had to use tears and pouts to get him to suggest a grand dinner out. He wanted to go to Rector's, but Marguerite insisted on the more refined Delmonico's. And no private room this time!

Marguerite swept into the fashionable restaurant, happily reminding herself how wonderful it was to always feel well-dressed. She thought of her old blue velvet gown with disdain. Tonight she was in rose satin bordered with black fur. The godet pleated skirt had a beaded iris design, and the bodice was elaborately tucked and beaded as well. She wore a jeweled aigrette in her hair and carried a tulle fan appliqued with black lace and trimmed with deep pink roses.

Edwin seemed a little distracted, but Marguerite was so happy to be out she didn't care. She hummed as she perused the menu. Pheasant would be nice. Or perhaps terrapin. Or both—of course, they could order both, she realized, her mouth already watering.

Edwin looked bored, or nervous, and she decided it was time to entertain him. “I think I should like a bicycle,” she said brightly, sipping a glass of wine. She smiled flirtatiously at him. “Would you like that, Edwin? We could be like Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell. We'll ride through the Park on gold-plated bicycles studded with jewels.” She giggled. “And I would have a darling bicycling costume. I saw one in
Harper's Bazar
just yesterday. It had Turkish trousers, can you imagine? Would you like me in trousers, Edwin?”

“Yes, of course,” Edwin said. But it was clear he hadn't been listening to her at all. He was staring across the room.

Marguerite followed his gaze and saw that it was trained on the erect back of a woman in a black satin gown. Last year's, Marguerite thought disdainfully. The silhouette for the nineties was already changing to an hourglass figure. Skirts were wider, and bustles not nearly so prominent. She wasn't jealous, for the woman was older, and Marguerite could see, when she turned her head, that she was double-chinned.

“Who are you looking at, Edwin?” she asked, buttering a roll. “Do you know that lady?” she asked with her mouth full.

Edwin looked at her, and she saw distaste cross his delicate features for a moment. “Marguerite, never butter a whole roll. Break off a piece.”

She swallowed. “All right,” she snapped. She shouldn't mind when Edwin corrected her; she wanted to learn. But she did mind. It was the way Edwin did it; Toby could tell her anything and she would nod and thank him. “But do you know her, or not?”

“She's my aunt Alicia,” Edwin said. “She's with my cousins Kitty and Robert. I must greet her. I'm sure she'll see me in a moment.”

“Shall I come with you?” Marguerite frowned. “Or should you bring her over to meet me, is that how it's done?”

Edwin stood. He pushed a hand through his curly hair agitatedly. “No, no. Not tonight. I'll return in a moment.”

“Edwin, you can't leave me here alone!”

“Just for a moment. Don't worry, dearest.” Edwin straightened his vest and dashed off. He looked like a scared rabbit, Marguerite thought scornfully. She broke her roll into smaller pieces and buttered one of them. It seemed rather inefficient, to butter a bunch of small pieces rather than get it over with at once.

“Miss Corbeau?” The waiter bowed slightly. “Mr. Stiers has requested a private dining room. Our largest is available.”

Marguerite scowled. “But I like this table.”

The waiter, who had just been given a large tip by Edwin, smiled officiously. “Yes. But this is our most elegant room. Mr. Astor has just left with his party, and we've set it up for Mr. Stiers. It's Mr. Astor's favorite room.” Edwin had advised the waiter to please drop that piece of information.

Marguerite hesitated. Tomorrow, she could tell her maid and Toby that she dined in Mr. Astor's favorite room at Delmonico's. She could describe the elegant appointments in detail. She nodded at the waiter, who bowed and helped her from the chair.

Mollified only slightly, Marguerite followed the waiter toward the stairs to the private room above. She peeked behind her but could not get a good look at Edwin's aunt or his cousins. His back was effectively shielding his aunt, and his cousin Kitty was in profile. She seemed to have a pleasant face. Why couldn't Marguerite meet them now? Why did Edwin keep putting off her introduction to his family? He was such a weakling sometimes. She would have to take charge when they were married.

When they reached the private dining room, Marguerite turned to the waiter. “Please bring some champagne,” she said. “I don't like the wine. Bring whatever champagne Mr. Astor drank,” she added impulsively, hoping it was ridiculously expensive.

The waiter bowed again and left the room, closing the door softly. Marguerite stood and surveyed the velvet hangings, the carved gilded boiserie, the small green marble fireplace. She supposed the room was pretty, but she felt hemmed in. She sighed. So she would have dinner with Edwin alone again. Nothing to look at but his bland handsome face, no admiration to excite but his, which was already familiar and well-tested.

Marguerite sank into a red brocade chair and for the first time, she went over the past weeks in her mind. She knew that Edwin was still besotted with her, but wasn't he coming to see her less frequently? Why was she never invited to those endless dinners he “had to” attend?

Frowning, Marguerite realized that when they did go out, they dined at places where they would run into male friends but she had yet to meet one female cousin, aunt, or distant relative of Edwin's. She realized that she had no friends, except for Toby. She had gone to visit Columbine and felt out of place in the crowded parlor, with nothing to say of her days or her nights. The intimacy that had sprung up between them, that shared secret of that frightening dusk with Lawrence Birch, had seemed to melt away with time and daylight. She saw that she had begun to look pathetically forward to conversations with her maid, an illiterate Irish girl. And she began to see that she was bored.

Horatio left his office and took the El to Fourteenth Street. Sometimes he liked to take his work to Union Square and think. He told himself he needed some peace and fresh air to puzzle out the perfect lead for his latest story.

His usual bench was empty, thank goodness. Across the square, through the bare branches of trees, he could look across Fourteenth Street straight into the offices of the New Women Society. It was impossible to distinguish forms behind the windows, impossible to see anything at all except for the window behind which he knew Bell breathed and thought, drank tea, scratched, stretched, yawned, was challenged or bored or happy or sad. Behind that window, Bell existed, and therefore he sat in the park and he looked at it. He was in a sorry state, he knew, an object, should the people passing by know his intention, of scorn or pathos. Still, he did not move.

He made desultory notes, but mostly, he thought about Bell and his own stupidity. His days with Marguerite were like a dream, the violent passion she stirred an uncomfortable memory. He had no idea why he had lost his head over her, had no idea why it started or why it ended, and that knowledge filled him with a sort of panic. He realized he had not yet begun to understand himself. He realized that he was as much a fool as any blustering political figure he had lampooned. He was humbled and he was ashamed, and he was still in love with Bell.

At first, he thought his longing had conjured her, but Horatio slowly realized that Bell herself was heading across the square. She was walking directly toward him, wearing a black hat with a green veil, with the businesslike walk he had grown to love. There was no alluring sway of hips, just a straightforward stride, a busy woman getting from one place to another. There was a slight nervousness in that step that only a lover might notice, the hesitation of a beautiful woman who is afraid, at any moment, that she might be examined by a stranger.

She was almost upon him when she recognized him. Her step faltered for just an instant, and she came forward with a smile. “Horatio, how nice to see you.”