She seemed so ephemeral—her mind here and there at random—but I was still so enamored with her, and I assumed she with me, and so hopeful for our future, that I pushed any hesitation out of my mind. Instead, I sat down beside her and she cupped my face in her hands and smiled into it and kissed my mouth. I wrapped my arms around her and she pulled me down onto the bed on top of her, kissing my face and licking my ear. The heat of her rose into me and I was on top of her and she on top of me and if we could have consumed each other we would have.
When we had finished, lying in each other’s arms, she sighed, contentedly, I thought. “Fairfax, tell me: whatever happened to the portrait of your mother?”
I was startled into dumbness for a moment. “What portrait?” I managed to ask.
“The one that used to hang here in this house.”
“Of my mother?” My God, I thought. It could not be. “How do you know it was she?”
She laughed. “You donkey. She looked just like your brother. Like Rowland. You look like your father and he looks like her, with her fair hair and her blue eyes.”
“You saw it?”
She laughed into my neck. “She was beautiful, wasn’t she?” And then, in her way of flitting from one thing to another, she asked, “When can we return home?”
Chapter 7
The portrait had been here, in Spanish Town, I thought. But it was not there anymore, at least not in the house. Where could it be? In his offices? Had he taken it back to England with him? My mind would not let go of it, and when next I was in Spanish Town I asked Sukey if she knew what had happened to the portrait of my mother that had been in the house. She frowned, shaking her head, appearing genuinely confused. I described it to her, but she still had no recollection of it. Then I asked if she remembered my brother, Rowland.
“He tall?” she asked. “Pretty boy?”
I had to laugh at that. So she did remember him, but not well. She had been only a child herself, she said, living at Valley View.
“How long have you been staying at my father’s house?” I asked.
“Eight years, nine.” She seemed uncomfortable with my questions, but it was clear she could be of no help in finding the portrait. And, after searching my father’s office, I put it out of my mind.
*
We returned to Valley View, and though I still thought both of us would sometimes reside there and sometimes in Spanish Town when I needed to attend to business, it became clear that Bertha had no intention of doing so. Even at Valley View, I began to notice that Bertha’s temperament was changing and that she spent much of her time wandering barefoot through the house, as if searching for some lost item, or else closeted with Molly and one or two others, still playing their mysterious games with feathers and knucklebones and straw dolls and other odd items. Her father paid her little attention, preferring my company from the start. I worried some over what Bertha would think of her father’s apparent preference for me, but she seemed not to notice it. She rarely ate meals with me and her father, but she did continue to occupy my bed each night and surround me with her caresses, and I was content, enveloped by the scent of her.
Ball invitations for the two of us began to arrive almost immediately on our return. I was thrilled, imagining myself proudly entering a hall, Bertha on my arm, the envious glances of other men, my face wreathed in smiles. I imagined us dancing the night away—reels and contra dances and even waltzes—until we were dizzy with exhaustion.
“When shall we leave?” I asked her the first time. “It will take us most of an hour to get there, I should think.”
“We?” she replied. “Don’t be stupid; wives never go with husbands. The men always come first; surely even you must have noticed that.”
“But I thought—”
“Oh, Fairfax, really. It is not done. And I would certainly not do it, even if it were. You go, whenever you like, as you have always done. And I will arrive when it suits me.”
“But”—I saw the expression on her face but blundered on, nevertheless—“but we will dance together, surely.”
She tilted her head downward as she often did, coyly, gazing at me through her eyelashes, a smile spreading slowly across her face. “Of course, my darling. When I have arrived.” When she had made her entrance, was what she meant. Marriage had not changed her wish to be seen and admired by all in attendance. Still, I claimed her at the first reel, but after that initial dance, she turned from me and tilted her head at a man I had never seen before. He took her from me, and after that she was with another and then another. I broke in from time to time, but she pouted when I did so, as if I were ruining her evening, and after a time I gave up altogether and stood out on the veranda with a group of planters, smoking cigars and talking about the cockfights.
She did not leave the ball early that evening, as she had done every other time since I had known her. Instead, she stayed to the very end. A few times, she pulled her partner out onto the veranda, leaning close to him and laughing softly. I was tempted to leave, but I stayed on, for I did not want the others to see my jealousy, or how little control I had over my own wife.
She left the ball as dawn was nearly breaking. Kissing her final partner on the cheek, and gathering her wrap against the night air, she mounted her carriage. She did not even seem to notice that my horse followed behind, and that I trudged up the steps to the house in her wake.
Once inside, she turned to me. “I must say, you behaved abominably,” she snapped. “I cannot imagine what people thought.”
“Abominably? Me?” I countered. “It was you who refused to dance with your own husband.”
“Refused? I did not refuse! You were never around. It seemed as if you were never to be found. And leaving me half the night with that horrid Jasper Duncombe while you mooned over that stupid wife of his!”
“You kissed him!”
“Kissed him? I? Kissed him? That lout! I would rather kiss a tree frog.”
I stared at her in astonishment.
She stared back, her eyes locked on mine, her pout slowly breaking into a coy smile, and she stepped closer. “Take me,” she whispered.
I could not believe it—my head whirling at the speed with which her emotions changed. Yet, was this not the Bertha I preferred, I asked myself—a loving and lusty wife? She stepped closer and put her arms around my neck, kissing me full on the mouth, and I responded, and together we made our way to our room and fell upon the bed.
When we had finished, spent, I caressed errant locks of hair from her face and kissed her gently until she turned away from me. “You are nothing like your brother,” she murmured.
“What?” I asked, suddenly chilled.
“You are nothing like your brother,” she repeated slowly.
I moved back from her. I was indeed nothing like my brother, I knew, but I could not think of a response to that.
But she could. “He is tall and slim and fair, and he dances as if he is moving on a cloud, while you—”
“That’s enough,” I said. I did not need to be told by my own wife how much she might have preferred Rowland. “You were a child when he was here,” I said, throwing on my garments. “And you had a child’s imagination. But now you are a woman, and you know nothing of Rowland.”
“It is you who knows nothing!” she screamed. “You stupid…graceless…ugly—” I slammed the door on her words.
*