“Clean and bright and lovely and scruffy.”
Lionel turns her around, against his oaken chest. He unpins her hair and washes it with gentle movements of his strong fingers. He rinses it clean. When the water cools, he wraps her in a towel and takes her to bed.
? ? ?
VIOLET LOVES the way she and Lionel make love: his exuberant movements, the impish way he tickles her and nudges unexpected parts of her body into wakefulness; the snatches of delighted laughter, the luxurious stopping and lingering. She loves the morning beauty of his body, his black hair and golden skin, his burly strength, the way the light curves around his shoulders as she rolls him over for more. The way he looks at her, as if he’s about to swallow her whole, and then he does.
Now he clasps both her hands, now he tightens his fingers and dares her to look away. Now she finishes with a violent cry, under his naked stare, his tender pummeling, and a moment later she finishes him, too. They lie joined and senseless in the sunlit bed. He keeps his palms locked with her palms, his fever skin pressed into her fever skin, his body safe inside hers as long as he possibly can.
? ? ?
VIOLET WAKES to the sound of splashing water. Through the open wedge of the bathroom door, she sees Lionel standing before the sink, beautifully naked, brute-boned and muscular, shaving his face with efficient strokes of his razor. She stretches pleasurably, enthralled by the intimacy of this domestic act. He catches her gaze in the mirror and smiles. “Awake at last?”
“It can’t be that long, can it?”
“Three hours, sleepyhead. It’s past ten o’clock.” He finishes, cleans the blade, pats his face dry with a towel. “I’ve ordered breakfast. It should be up any minute.”
“Good. I’m awfully hungry.”
“You should be.” He hangs the towel on the rack and emerges from the bathroom to sit next to her on the tousled bed. His black hair has been sleeked back from his face with a wet comb. He rests his hand on her hip. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“What we should do next.”
She smiles and wiggles her toes. “I have a few ideas.”
But Lionel doesn’t laugh. “We have to leave Berlin, Violet. As soon as possible. You know we can’t stay.”
“No, of course not.” She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. Her body is loose and heavy from the warm bath, from Lionel’s lovemaking, and the soft feather-scented nap afterward. “I shall have to divorce Walter.”
“The sooner the better, I think.”
“As soon as I can speak to a lawyer.”
“Well, you’ve plenty of grounds. But we’ll have to do it in London. We’ll have to leave, in any case; I daresay they’ll be expelling us shortly, if the situation gets any touchier. Or worse, interning us.” He pauses. “What are you thinking, Violet?”
“I was thinking that I should probably apply to Rutherford’s laboratory, in Manchester. I suppose Walter has too much influence at the Devonshire; they’ll never take me back.”
“Actually, I imagine it’s quite the opposite.”
She turns her head to look at him. “The opposite?”
“I mean he’s still in disgrace there, the last I heard.”
Violet heaves herself up to a sitting position and holds the sheets illogically to her chest. “Disgrace? What do you mean? Are they angry because he left them for Berlin?”
The skin flexes below Lionel’s right eye. He studies her for a moment, and says, “Do you mean you don’t know? You’ve no idea?”
“About what?” She grips his bare knee. “About what, Lionel?”
“Violet, he was thrown out. You didn’t know that? When you left. Someone had told the trustees about you, that he’d seduced you.” His hand covers hers. “That you were with child by him.”
Violet whispers: “Yes, I was. But nobody knew, except for me and Walter. Well, and . . .” She frowns. “But he wouldn’t have said anything, would he? He couldn’t, he would have been risking everything—”
“Who, Violet?”
“The doctor. The doctor Walter sent me to.” She doesn’t say, To get rid of the baby.
Lionel looks at her earnestly, as if he knows she’s holding something back. But he’s a gentleman, he doesn’t ask. Instead he allows a patient pause and says: “Violet, Grant was thrown out. I know it beyond a doubt. I expect they only helped him with the Kaiser Wilhelm to keep things quiet.”
She watches Lionel’s face blankly, hollowed out, bewildered. “That’s why he married me. That was their condition. Their dirty bargain.”
“Not so dirty, I think. They were only trying to protect you.”
“If they wanted to protect me, they should have kept me away from him.” Violet stares at her hands, enclosed in Lionel’s. They are not a lady’s hands. They have been tried and tested in a chemical laboratory, and despite her youth there are tiny wrinkles about the knuckles, callouses about the pads of her fingers and thumbs. “I lost the baby anyway.”
“I’m very sorry.”