Beguiling the Beauty

CHAPTER 9

The western sky glowed. Fire burnished the edge of the sea. The last fingers of daylight caressed the long, feathery clouds and gilded them the golden peach of fine Calvados.

Christian had never seen a more perfect sunset. The baroness, however, was not on hand to share this incandescent view—instead, she was in her room, attending to her toilette.

It was their sixth day at sea. The ship was expected to call on Queenstown the next morning. The morning after that, Southampton. He had, therefore, gone to considerable trouble to convince her to attend the captain’s dinner this evening. She’d thought him mad, but he was very persistent. He wanted to show her that it was quite feasible for them to appear in public while her veil remained firmly in place. That the rest of Society would defer to his wish and accept her as she was.

He would clear all obstacles. He would pave the way. And he would strew the path with the rarest fossils, for her to claim the place in his life that belonged to her and her alone.

Venetia had begun to consider possible strategies.

Perhaps the baroness would mention in a letter that her friend Mrs. Easterbrook lived in London. Perhaps Venetia, upon meeting Christian at some point during the Season, would let it slip that her delightful chum Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg had mentioned that she, too, had recently traveled on the Rhodesia. And perhaps, before anything else, she ought to achieve calling terms with the dowager duchess—to such a degree that the latter would be willing to vouch for Venetia’s character.

This was why, she thought ruefully as she tugged on her dinner gloves, sensible people did not lead double lives: There was no graceful way to collapse a bifurcated existence back into a single, uncomplicated one.

Miss Arnaud had taken the sparkling paillettes from another one of Venetia’s dinner gowns and turned her veil into an accessory that, while still highly odd, exuded a certain glamour. Venetia stepped back from the mirror and turned in a circle. She wanted her presence to add to his stature, not detract from it. The cobalt blue dinner gown was certainly everything a frock ought to be—and would have matched her eyes if one could see them—

She shook her head. The irregularity of the proceedings could not be helped; she could only follow his lead and hope to be remembered as agreeable.

He awaited her at the newel post of the stairs leading down into the dining saloon, highly delectable in his evening formals.

“You are the most sensational-looking lady tonight, darling,” he said as he offered her his arm.

It always made her heart pound to hear him call her by that endearment.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that. You do realize we are being very brazen, do you not?”

“Brazenness is for lesser mortals,” he said. “The Duke of Lexington defines good form—or redefines it, if need be.”

“At least you are diverting to be around.”

He leaned close. “I’ll tell you a not-quite-secret: No one else says that, not even my stepmother.”

She turned her face. They were very nearly nose to nose—brazenness indeed. “Good, keep it that way. I want to see you at your loftiest and most glacial tonight.”

“For you, I will. But if I fail miserably—if I act with insufficient condescension or, God forbid, put anyone at ease—know that you and you alone are responsible.”

“What a heavy charge: hundreds of years of unbroken hauteur at stake.”

He squeezed her hand briefly. “At last you understand what you have done.”

They were seated together, with a young American embarking upon his grand tour of the Old World to Venetia’s right. Someone had obviously informed him that she did not—or would not—speak English, for the young American, Mr. Cameron, greeted her with a “Guten Abend, Gnädige Frau.”

His German had more courage than skill, but he was unconcerned about mistakes and game for conversation. They spoke of his planned itinerary. Rather than the relics of the classical age, Mr. Cameron was most excited to visit the Eiffel Tower and bestride that modern marvel. He informed Venetia, with charming frankness, that he hoped the top of the tower would sway majestically in a gust and that he, strong, sturdy man he was, would be just the person to catch a beautiful young lady fainting of fright.

Christian, who had been engaged in conversation with Mrs. Vanderwoude, a Manhattan matriarch, turned and said, “Good luck, Mr. Cameron. I was there during the Exposition Universelle and the top of the tower was so crowded that an unconscious young lady would have remained upright until she came to on her own.”

Mr. Cameron had a hearty guffaw at this. Venetia couldn’t help but smile at her lover. Of course he couldn’t see it, but he had an uncanny sense for when she smiled beneath her veil—and he smiled back at her.

She felt as if she’d been hugging puppies all day.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a young lady from across the table. She’d been introduced to Venetia as Miss Vanderwoude. “Are you by some chance the same duke who gave a lecture at Harvard?”

Venetia stilled.

“Gloria, must you speak in such stentorian tones?” Mrs. Vanderwoude was not pleased.

“Sorry, Grandmamma,” said Miss Vanderwoude. The volume of her voice, however, did not reduce at all. “But are you, sir?”

“I am,” said Christian, taking a sip of his wine.

“What a coincidence!” Miss Vanderwoude all but clapped. “My cousin and his wife, who came to see me last week, had been at your lecture.”

“I’m glad to hear they hadn’t expired of boredom.”

It was a droll comment, and Venetia meant to smile again. But she couldn’t. A chill spread between her shoulder blades.

“They enjoyed your lecture very much. My cousin’s wife especially relished your anecdote concerning the beautiful lady who has the heart of a Lady Macbeth.”

Venetia’s hand went to her throat. She couldn’t seem to pull in any air.

“That would be taking it quite too far,” said Christian. “I’ve never accused the lady of either murder or accessory to murder.”

That was hardly a defense, was it?

“But if she drove her husband to an early grave—”

“Miss Vanderwoude, events that happen in a sequential manner do not necessarily imply causation. The lady might have made her husband miserable, but it is the nature of marriage for its inmates to devastate each other at times—or so I have been given to understand. Neither you nor I know the details of said marriage. Let us refrain from ill-founded speculations.”

Venetia exhaled.

“But we are among friends here, aren’t we?” said the girl conspiratorially. “What say you, sir, that you tell us who the lady is. And my friends and I, we will find out exactly how culpable—or not, as it may be—the lady was in her husband’s early passing.”

“Gloria!” protested her grandmother. “Your Grace, allow me to apologize for the child’s impudence.”

Christian inclined his head, accepting the apology. Now he turned his gaze on Miss Vanderwoude. Her cheeky grin faded. She began to look left and right, as if hoping someone might shield her from his attention. When no one said or did anything, she tried to meet his eye, with a sheepish smile that died awkwardly.

The nearby diners held their collective breath, waiting. They all believed he would mete out some terrible denunciation. But what if he did not find the idea lacking in merit, Venetia thought wildly. What if he only objected to the public nature of Miss Vanderwoude’s overture?

“No,” he said. “That is not a good idea.”

Venetia’s heart managed a weak beat. The occupants of the table exhaled at the propriety and restraint of his rebuke. Miss Vanderwoude’s lips quivered before she smiled tentatively. “I do believe you are right, sir.”

Indicating that nothing more was to be said on the subject, he turned toward Venetia, “You don’t seem to have touched your prawns, baroness.”

It was a little joke meant for her, as she never ate anything while she had on her veil. “I shall presently remedy this oversight,” she said, through numb lips.

Mrs. Vanderwoude wanted his opinion on something. Venetia leaned in Mr. Cameron’s direction.

“Miss Vanderwoude, is she headed to London?”

“No, to the Continent, like myself. We disembark at Hamburg, head for Paris, and from there, for points east and south.”

“And is she in any way serious about pursuing the identity of the lady she mentioned?”

Mr. Cameron laughed softly. “I’d be surprised if by tomorrow morning she even remembers she’d ever had the idea. She is as impulsive and forgetful as a grasshopper, that one.”

All the same, Venetia’s evening was ruined. The incursion of reality had been too strong. If Miss Vanderwoude, who had never attended the lecture, now knew of the scandalous story the duke had related, there might be others who would hear of it and would not need a detective to realize of whom he’d been speaking.

On the other hand, what if he were to learn that Venetia—not the baroness, but Mrs. Easterbrook—had not only been in America, but had been in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the exact same time as his Harvard lecture?

One could only juggle sticks of dynamite for so long before they exploded one by one.

I’m sorry, darling,” said Christian, as soon as he and the baroness were inside his rooms.

She glanced back at him, the paillettes on her veil catching light like so many tiny mirrors. But the sparkle had gone from her voice. “Why do you apologize to me?”

“I have upset you.”

He’d upset himself—Miss Vanderwoude’s impertinence had been a grave reminder that his mistake had compounded far beyond its original dimensions. But the baroness’s distress was, if possible, more acute than his own. Afterward, though she’d gamely kept up a constant stream of friendly banter with Mr. Cameron, he’d barely tasted anything, knowing he’d sunken far in her esteem.

She sat down on the chaise, the set of her shoulders both tense and weary. And something in the way her fingers clung to one another spoke more than just disappointment: She was afraid.

“Please say something.”

She tilted her head back, as if looking heavenward for help. “Miss Vanderwoude was willing to devote her own time and funds to muck about the private affairs of someone she’d never met and only heard of secondhand. It astounds me what you must have said to arouse such unseemly interest.”

Her dispirited words were nails pounded into his heart. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

“Indeed you shouldn’t. Your comments caused someone to be spoken of as undiluted evil.”

He sat down next to her and took her hand in his. “I did not do it out of malice, if that is what concerns you. I relayed my anecdote less as an objective lesson for my audience than as a reminder to myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

He would have to explain, to expose himself as he never had. But he cared little for his mortification. The only thing that mattered was that she must not turn away from him.

“The woman I used as an example at Harvard—she was my elsewhere.”

She yanked her hand from his. He gripped her arm before she could leap away. “Please, listen.”

“My God,” she said, looking everywhere but at him. “My God.”

If he could only pull out his heart to show her. But he had only words, slow, laborious, useless words. “The lady in question is bewitchingly beautiful. And for a decade, I was fixated by her beauty. I wrote an entire article on the evolutionary significance of beauty as a rebuke to myself, that I, who understood the concepts so well, nevertheless could not escape the magnetic pull of one particular woman’s beauty.”

Her veil rippled with her agitated breathing. “And that was not enough, the article? You had to speak of it in public?”

“My obsession was mindless. I had to stay away from places she frequented. If I saw her, it wouldn’t have mattered whether she hastened her husband’s journey to the grave. I’d have willingly married her just to possess her.”

In her lap, her hands shook visibly. He, too, shook—but inside, where fear and regret threatened to drown the hopes that had been leaping and frolicking like pods of dolphins alongside the Rhodesia.

“I’ve long been ashamed of this fixation, but it clung to me like a leech. And this time, I wouldn’t be able to stay away from her—she is a fixture at the London Season. I was troubled that I might give in and approach her, propriety and pride notwithstanding.” The dream, damn the dream. “Believe me, I’d never intended such a catastrophic lapse of judgment.”

She yanked free her arm, rose, and walked away.

Venetia felt blown to pieces, all the dynamite sticks she’d been juggling having detonated at once.

She hadn’t been a random example, something casually plucked out of all his accumulated experiences to illustrate a passing point. Rather, she had been the bane of his existence.

She could not grasp it. The reach of her mind had been diminished by her shock. She could only gape at the idea, as if it were a tentacled sea monster come to sink the Rhodesia.

He said he’d been nineteen. She would have also been nineteen—very much still married, but with her erstwhile romantic illusions already dashed upon the hard rock of Tony’s indestructible self-love.

One of the Harrow players couldn’t stop staring at you. If someone had handed him a fork he’d have devoured you in one sitting.

He’d been that Harrow player. She’d been his despised obsession. And she was also his salvation—from herself.

Panic swept in like a cyclone.

Until now, it was possible to imagine her ruse being forgiven. Not anymore, not after he had exposed his Achilles’ heel to the last person he’d willingly give that knowledge.

For that, he would not forgive her. Ever.

He rose to his feet. “Please say something.”

But she couldn’t speak. All she understood was a rising desperation: Their affair must end now, before things could get any worse.

She turned her back to him. Her hands, braced apart, gripped the edge of the writing desk, as if she couldn’t quite support her own weight. He couldn’t breathe—to have caused pain to the woman who’d only ever brought him warmth and joy.

He turned off the lamp, approached her, and removed her veil.

She inhaled unsteadily. He set his hands on either side of hers and kissed her hair, holding the pristine, sweet scent of her deep in his lungs.

“I love you.” The words had arrived on their own, like butterflies emerging from cocoons when their time had come. He, too, felt transformed, from a boy who mistook compulsion for love to a man who at last understood his own heart.

She shuddered.

“You are the one I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

She spun around and covered his mouth with her hand.

He moved her hand aside. “From the beginning—do you not remember the lift? You overtook my entire—”

She kissed him, a rampage of lips and tongue. Relief flooded him—she would still have him. And such ardor, as if she could not bear the least distance between them. Her fever burned in him. He lifted her bottom onto the desk and pushed up her skirts. She tugged impatiently at her drawers. He would have gone down on his knees to worship her, but she refused to let their lips part.

Instead, she unfastened his trousers and, without further preliminaries, took him inside her. He was unspeakably aroused—the feel of her, the rain-clean taste of her, the urgency of her. She panted and trembled with her need, ravishing him, urging him to ravish her in return.

No more words were needed. She was the only thing that mattered. They were the only thing that mattered. The avalanche of pleasure to come would meld them into one seamless union.

There were no secrets left.

Nothing separated them now.

Christian awakened to an eerie stillness, as if the Rhodesia’s heart had stopped beating. It took him a disoriented second to realize that the engines had stopped humming.

The liner had dropped anchor in Queenstown.

Instinctively he reached for her, but she was not in his bed, to which they’d repaired for more lovemaking, forging ever greater pleasure and closeness for the better part of the night. He called to her, thinking perhaps she was in the parlor or the water closet. Silence answered him.

Alarm prickled his spine—she’d never left without a word. He grabbed his pocket watch from the nightstand. Five minutes to nine—quite late for him. Maybe she had not wished to disturb his slumber. He pulled on some clothes, dashed off a note explaining his possible late arrival for their walk, and rang for the suite steward to take it to her.

The suite steward returned as he was applying shaving soap to his face. “Sir, the baroness’s room steward told me that she has disembarked.”

Christian turned around. “For a tour?”

Ocean liners replenished their supplies at Queenstown. It was not uncommon for passengers to use the time for an excursion into the Irish countryside.

“No, sir. She asked for her luggage to be sent ashore.”

She was leaving. And last night, which he’d believed to herald a new era for them, had been but a long, wordless good-bye for her. She did not believe in his love. She did not trust that he’d left his former obsession behind. And she could not imagine any likely future for them.

All the possibilities that had come to life with her presence began to shatter, and his heart with them.

“She might still be in the disembarkation queue, sir,” said the steward. “Shall I go down for a look?”

The disembarkation queue. Of course, the Rhodesia had not docked. She was somewhere in the harbor. Passengers and their luggage must wait to be ferried in tenders.

Christian washed the soap from his face, threw on a day coat, grabbed his hat, and rushed down to the main deck. The sky was gray. The Atlantic was gray. Even Ireland, otherwise green and beautiful, was an unremitting spread of dreariness.

He pushed through the crowd, frantically searching for her familiar silhouette. The entire population of the ship seemed to have congregated near the tenders. Old ladies tottered about in pairs. Children were held aloft to see over the rails. Young Americans chattered about Buckingham Palace and Shakespeare’s cottage, while waving at a tender rowing toward the Rhodesia.

At last he spotted her standing at the rail. Relief swallowed him whole. As if sensing his urgency, the crowd parted, and those near her scooted away to make room for him. But she did not acknowledge his presence as he came to stand beside her. Her face remained bent to the waves that lapped at the riveted steel plates of the ship’s hull.

“Why? Why are you leaving?”

“I’ve reached my destination.”

“Is it because you think I still love Mrs. Elsewhere?”

“It is not that.”

“Look at me when you say that.”

Her face turned toward him. Her hand tightened on the railing, as if she were surprised by his appearance. He’d been perspiring earlier. But standing on the open deck without his overcoat—the cold was sudden and intense.

“It is not that,” she repeated. “You’ve always said that I could leave anytime. I am leaving now. I don’t need another reason.”

He shivered. From the cold or her words he did not know. “Does it mean nothing that I love you?”

“You don’t love me. You are in love with a creature of your own imagination.”

“That is not true. I don’t need to know your face to know you.”

“I am a fraud, remember? There is no Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg.”

“You think I have forgotten that? I don’t need you to be a baroness. Who you are is more than good enough for me.”

Her laughter sounded bitter. “Let’s not argue a moot point.”

He placed his hand on her arm. “I won’t, if you stay.”

She shook her head. “My luggage is already on the dock.”

“It can easily be brought back on board.”

She shook her head more vigorously. “Let it be. Some things are lovely precisely because they are brief.”

“And other things are lovely because they are rare and beautiful—and should be given a chance to stand the test of time.”

She was silent. His heart thumped wildly. Then she reached up and kissed him on the cheek through her veil. “Good-bye.”

It was the end of the world, nothing but wreckage where entire cities of hope once stood, their spires shining in the sun. Disbelief and despair gripped him turn by turn. Chaos reigned. He was cold, so very cold, the wind like knives upon his skin.

Then, just as suddenly, the confidence he’d taken for granted in his youth reasserted itself. Or perhaps it was only a gambler’s acceptance of all possible outcomes, as he laid his cards on the table.

“Marry me,” he said.

She swayed. She’d swindled a declaration of love, and now a proposal of marriage. He would despise her so much it would make Sodom and Gomorrah’s fate seem like a fairy tale.

Irony—for it was exactly what she had wanted in the first place.

“I can’t,” she said weakly. “No marriage between us would be considered valid.”

“Let’s meet again and discuss what we need to do to make it valid.”

She’d been shocked, when he first found her, to see him unshaven, without his collar, his necktie, his waistcoat, or his overcoat. And his agitation had, if anything, exceeded his dishevelment. But now he radiated mastery and purpose. He’d made up his mind, and nothing was going to dissuade him from his choice.

She, on the other hand, had become all jitters. “What can we possibly discuss?”

“Your circumstances, obviously. Some dilemma prevents you from using your own name. When we meet again you will do me the courtesy of giving me a frank account, nothing held back.”

He might as well hand her a bucket of tar and the innards of a duvet. “It will be no use. Nothing will change.”

“You forget who I am. Whatever your difficulties, I can help you.”

“Even the Duke of Lexington cannot wave away every impediment in his path.”

“Not when you won’t tell me anything, I cannot. But we will meet. And you will tell me what is holding you back—you owe me as much.”

She could see the headline: THE DUKE OF LEXINGTON STRANGLES SOCIETY BEAUTY.

“You want to come with me on my expeditions, don’t you?” he said softly. “Have I ever told you that I’ve a small museum at home? And drawers upon drawers of enormous fossilized teeth that I’m sure will interest you greatly?”

Why must he do this to her?

“There is also an abandoned quarry on my estate, with beautifully differentiated geological strata and an abundance of fossils. Marry me and it’s all yours.”

Throw aside you veil, shouted a voice inside her. Throw aside the stupid veil. End this right now.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t face his wrath. Nor the very large likelihood that his love would not survive his first look at her face. Was it wrong to preserve their affair as it was, to let nothing blemish its perfect memories?

“Lady, are you ready?” one of the tender’s crewmen called.

The tender that had been rowing toward the Rhodesia had disgorged the newcomers and was loading the final batch of passengers to be taken ashore.

“I must go,” she murmured.

“The lady will need one more minute,” said Christian.

His tone allowed no dispute. The crewman touched brim of his cap. “Aye, sir.”

Her lover took her hands in his. “I will say good-bye now, but I expect to see you in London. At the Savoy Hotel, ten days from today. Bring the engraved pen for my birthday and we’ll drink to our future.”

She expelled a long, long breath. She’d say yes to anything now, to get away. “All right.”

But he didn’t let her go so easily. “Your word, do I have it?”

Perhaps no one else cared whether a beautiful woman was also honorable, but she had never gone back on her word. She shut her eyes tight. “You have it.”

He leaned in and kissed her cheek through the veil. “I love you. And I will wait for you.”

Well after the great ocean liner had disappeared beyond the narrow mouth of Cork Harbour, Venetia still remained on the pier.

She needed to locate a ticket agent to secure passage to England, cable Fitz to inform him of her time of arrival, not to mention find porters to haul the quarter-ton slab of stone that was Christian’s gift to her. But to tackle any of those tasks was to signal the end of her last hour as Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg.

The end of the happiest week of her life.

She didn’t know how long she stayed in place. She didn’t even notice that it had started to rain until a porter came to offer her an umbrella. She thanked him and allowed herself to be escorted away from the pier, toward shelter, toward the perfect life of the beautiful Mrs. Easterbrook.