“What, Hemi? What do you wonder?”
“What it is we’re doing. Or more accurately, what it is you’re doing. With me, I mean. When you have—” You warn me with your eyes and I pull up short. “Let’s just say, I’m a bit wanting in the pedigree department—not to mention the fortune department—and I can’t help thinking you see me as some sort of novelty. A diversion to liven up the social season. Slumming, I think you Yanks call it.”
Your eyes cloud, and for a moment, I think you’re going to cry. Instead, when your eyes return to mine, they’re sharp and hard, like bits of flint. “Slumming?”
“Or maybe it’s rebellion. A jab at your father, who’d hardly consider me suitable for his daughter, even if she weren’t already . . .”
Sensing where I’m headed, you fling open the car door. Before I know what you’re about, you’re off at a clip, heading for the lake. I barrel after you, bellowing into the stiff breeze coming off the water. “Where do you think you’re going? It’s bloody freezing out here.”
I’ve nearly caught up to you when you wheel about, your hair suddenly loose from its pins, tumbling wildly about your face. “Did you ever think I might just want you there? That I’d want to have a . . . friend . . . sitting at that table for a change? Someone who actually cares what I think? Or that I might be tired of only seeing you on the quiet? Of lunches on blankets or in cars, stolen kisses, chance meetings on street corners that aren’t chance at all.”
Your words stun me. Not the rawness of them, or even the way your eyes pool with tears as you say them, but because you’ve flung them at me like pebbles, as though the cause of all your unhappiness has to do with me.
“I’m not the impediment here, Belle. If you want things to be different, you have to make them different.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. I haven’t said his name, but it’s there between us anyway, swirling about us in the spiky November air. Teddy. Revoltingly rich, bloody perfect, not a brain in his head Teddy.
“Please take me back,” you say stonily as you step past me. “It’s an important dinner and I don’t dare be late.”
We drive back to the city in silence. I drop you off a block from where I picked you up. You slide out of the car with your package, then hover a moment on the sidewalk. “Will you be there?”
“That depends. Do you still want me there?”
“There will be a place card with your name on it. Come or don’t.”
Regretting Belle
(pgs. 48–54)
Come or don’t, you said. As if there were ever any question in the matter.
Still, your head comes around sharply when I’m shown into your father’s parlor by a man I assume is the butler. You catch yourself quickly, making your face blank, then murmur some excuse to the woman you’re talking to, a matronly type whose too-tight dress puts me in mind of an overripe eggplant. You smile coolly, hand extended as you cross the room to greet me, a vision in midnight-blue velvet. So polite. So gracious.
“It’s so good of you to round out our table on such short notice.” Your voice is just loud enough to be heard above the hum of conversation. A flawless performance. “Let me get you a drink. What will you have?”
“Gin and tonic, thanks.”
Your mouth curls at the corner, the merest hint of a smile. “Of course. The Englishman’s drink.”
I feel slightly disoriented as you turn and repeat the order to one of the white-coated waiters your father has hired for the occasion, as if time has warped somehow and whisked me back to the night of your engagement party, and then I realize you intended that very thing. You’re teasing me, a cat with a mouse.
You take my elbow, seemingly oblivious to the absurdity of the moment, and nod to the opposite side of the room, where your father stands chatting with three men in very expensive-looking suits. “Come, let me introduce you to your host.”
Your father looks up as you approach, a ready smile appearing on his squarish face, and for an instant, I see a hint of you in him, the smooth, practiced expression, flipped on like a switch. You have that look in your repertoire too.
He holds out an arm as you come to his side. “Gentlemen, my beautiful daughter and . . .” He pauses, running an eye over me. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I know your friend, my dear.”
You give him my name and nothing else. There’s a beat of silence, as if he’s waiting for me to fill in the blank. When I don’t, he thrusts out a hand. He looks me over for another moment, taking my measure, then introduces me to his companions. Wheeler, as I suspected, is one. Cobb is another. Dillon is the third.
“And how do you know my little girl?” he asks in the booming voice of a man who believes he has the world in his pocket.
Somehow, inconceivably, I haven’t prepared for this question. To my relief, you jump in. “He’s a friend of Teddy’s. We met at the St. Regis the night of my engagement party and I happened to run into him today as I was coming out of DuBarry. It was such a raw day that he took pity and offered me a ride. And I thought the least I could do was invite him to dinner as a thank-you. I forgot we were having guests.”
What a smooth liar you are, I think but manage to nod and smile. And then you’re whisking me off to introduce me to your sister, where the “old friend of Teddy’s” charade is repeated.
I only glimpsed your sister from a distance that night at the St. Regis, but once again, I’m struck by the differences between you. There are similarities, of course, despite the gap in your ages, a vague resemblance if you look very hard, but she’s a bloodless version of you, smaller and paler, as if the years have washed out all her color, and I find myself wondering if she always looked like this or if it’s the result of the life she’s lived. A husband chosen by her father, a stable of impeccably reared children, years of living up to expectations someone else has set for her. It makes me shudder to think you might look like this after a few years with Teddy.
She offers her hand, eyeing me a little too keenly for comfort. “Well, well. An Englishman. It seems my sister’s been hiding you from us. Why do you think that is?”
I shift uncomfortably, expecting you to come to my rescue, but you remain curiously tight-lipped, as if you’re enjoying my discomfort. “Well,” I say, trying not to sound awkward. “I’ve been rather busy since coming over. Settling in, getting the lay of the land. I’m afraid I haven’t had much time for socializing.”
Cee-Cee lifts a sharply penciled brow. Curious and a little skeptical. “It seems an odd time to travel, though, with all the trouble in Europe . . .”