“It makes no sense,” I said. “He could have visited me. Why did he lie about it to both of us? Why?”
“That’s a very good question,” Dottie countered. “I have wondered that myself. Perhaps it was the war that did it—I wouldn’t know. But the moment he told me Frances was dead, when I looked into his face, I realized he wasn’t the boy I’d known. He was a man, and a stranger to me.”
“He wasn’t a stranger to me,” I replied. “He wasn’t.”
“Then ask yourself why he was here that day while you were at home worrying about him,” Dottie said. “That’s what I would do.”
Then she was gone, though I did not see her leave, did not hear the door click shut. I stood in the dim lamplight, my mind spinning and my stomach sick, as the clock ticked quietly on the wall.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On our drive from London, Dottie had told me she expected me to serve tea among my other duties. As art buyers began to arrive at Wych Elm House, I put this task into practice.
It wasn’t difficult, as Dottie had noted. A potential buyer would arrive for a meeting; a maid would bring in a tray within five minutes, containing a tea service and several dainties; the maid would depart, and I would take over. I would pour the tea and serve it, my job only to be helpful, decorative, and silent. I felt much like I had in Casparov’s office, like a brass paperweight with the added bonus of arms. I wore the new frocks Dottie had had me order, and I kept my hair pinned up as neatly as I could. Dottie even loaned me a string of pearls, expensive but understated, to add to the effect. I was the same girl from Casparov’s office, but older, wiser, and more elegant.
There were a few advantages. It was easy, for one. And unlike Casparov, Dottie held all of her meetings in front of me, letting me hear every word of conversation while I sat there as if I didn’t exist. In this way I learned how she did things, and I also learned how she was going about finding a wife for Martin.
“That last fellow seemed very interested in the Turner,” I ventured to comment one day after a buyer had left.
“He talked too much about painters,” Dottie scoffed. “As if I wish to talk about painters. However, his daughter is pretty, and I hear he’s going to settle a good amount on her. If he writes asking for another meeting, say yes.”
She did not, in fact, want to talk about painters. Despite months of acquiring it, art for art’s sake was not Dottie’s goal. Art was simply a means to an end—or, in this case, a means to two ends: to make money and to find a suitable daughter-in-law, now that I was out of the equation.
We did not talk about our conversation in Frances’s bedroom. Nor did we discuss her original plans to wed me to her son. Martin told me she’d taken the news of my muddied legal status remarkably well. “I told her to find me somebody else,” he reported to me. “Anybody else, really. Though I hope she finds me someone pretty, at least.”
“I don’t like the sound of it,” I told him for the dozenth time. “You should pick your own wife.”
“I think of my life in terms of weeks, not years,” Martin replied. “I can’t imagine I’ll be with a wife for any length of time, so I can’t say it rightly matters.”
We debated this at length, over lunches and walks and the occasional evening drink in the drawing room. He had an easygoing nature—too easygoing, I thought. But he wasn’t just being agreeable when he acquiesced to Dottie’s plans to marry him off. I sensed true apathy beneath it all, a blankness that was dark and a little frightening. He had grown strong enough to come down from his bedroom again, but his health was dangerously fragile, and he didn’t often have the energy to be social. When he did, despite our debates I found myself enjoying his company.