“That’s what he’s here for, isn’t he? To make off with one of the girls? Well, Your Lordship, which one is it going to be? Both of them are pretty enough. The younger one is sweet but a bit too flighty if you ask me. And this one’s got her head screwed on straight but she has a sour disposition.”
His voice filled the room, but Emery Bingham was not a big man. He was compact and old, whittled down by time. He could have been Mrs. B’s father, perhaps even her grandfather. He looked a bit like a terrier at a dog show, prettified with his close-cut suit and his blunt beard—his mustache an iron-bristle brush that hid his mouth completely—but beneath the veneer he had a lean frame and a killer’s eyes, quick and hungry. The best efforts of the city’s tailors and barbers could not change what he was: a creature bred to enter dark, tight spaces and emerge with his prize clamped between his teeth.
“Let me get a good look at him,” Mr. Bingham said. “Ever since you got off that ship all I’ve heard is tittering about Sir Walter Scottish.”
“Father,” Félicité said. “Please don’t include me in their nonsense.”
“You’ll have to excuse Félicité,” Mrs. B said, with a curt clearing of the throat: Don’t ruin this for your sister.
“She doesn’t like to see anyone happy,” Anisette said. “Not even herself.”
If the Binghams had been set to simmer, they now threatened to reach a boil. The tableau was more vivant than ever. Francis stepped back and took a second look around the room, with its wall of books, endless carpet, nail-trimmed wingbacks with their undented leather seats, and the ceiling and its scene of Arcadian cavorting. The satyrs were shaggy-jowled, and wasn’t the leader of the goat-legged pack the spitting image of a younger Mr. Bingham? And the nymph at the center of the composition, the one whose wicked smile spurred the satyrs to their mad pursuit and whose hands made such a lackluster effort to conceal her abundant charms—didn’t she look more than a little like Mrs. B?
“What a show we’re putting on for our guest!” Mrs. B said. She reached a hand to each of her daughters in a way that would have evoked maternal pride if not for the white-knuckled grip she had on their wrists. The Bingham daughters composed themselves. This was a skirmish they had been waging for years, and one that they were a long way from resolving. They folded their hands, now free of their mother’s grasp, and put on small patient smiles while their eyes darted to ensure the other was observing the truce. The dustup with her sister had cooled something in Anisette, who looked less eager to gobble up Francis. Félicité, however, had gained a spark. Whether it was the sheen of action or simple schadenfreude, whatever she had robbed from her sister, she had added to herself.
Mr. Bingham gloried in the whole scene. The rapid boil, the flushed cheeks, his wife’s iron hands, all of it provoked real joy in him. No smile was visible beneath his brambly beard, but his eyes had the same mad glint that Francis had seen first in Anisette and then in Félicité. It must have come as a disappointment to him when the butler entered the room and announced that dinner was served. Mrs. B and the daughters rose as one and slowly disentangled themselves from each other. Sharp limbs and thorny stares softened. Bright smiles replaced pouts and glowers.
Mr. Bingham, rocking on his heels, was the last to leave the room. He had kept a gimlet eye on Francis, had seen the way he took in the books, his daughters, the ceiling. Now he too looked up and let his eyes trace the curves of the nymphs. There was his Delphine leading the charge (she always led the charge) but she wasn’t the only woman he’d known whose likeness graced the mural. That had taken some doing—keeping Delphine in the dark about the models he had handpicked and sent along to that crazy Belgian painter—but it had been worth it. Good times to think back on during sleepless nights. But that sort of fun was all in the past. The only one enjoying himself now was that woolly-legged bastard on the ceiling, though even he was trapped forever in the moment before he got what he wanted.
THE MEAL PLAYED out like an arcane ritual meant to appease a voracious culinary god—one whose chief commandments were quantity, variety, and luxury. It began with balled cantaloupe served in tiny silver bowls, then progressed to a chilled cream of tomato soup—an acknowledgment of the blistering sun that had set aglow the walls of the Bingham manse. As the ladies pecked at the bits of cold fruit and soup, talk turned to the can’t-miss sights of New York: Had he taken a stroll in the park, or seen the Metropolitan Museum? No? Then Anisette would have to show him around. Mr. Bingham ignored the conversation and the dishes before him; melons and tomatoes were children’s food. His mood improved with the presentation of a Halifax sole, which he smothered in sauce béarnaise, followed by a braised Wiltshire ham. Each course was announced by the butler, like the acts in a vaudeville show. The meat was accompanied by a cart of vegetables: cauliflower in hollandaise, green beans amandine, potatoes Parmentier. While the Binghams picked at their plates, Francis finished every morsel he was served. He assumed that each course was the last—meals in Ballyrath and Mountjoy had been single-plate affairs—but when a roast Philadelphia capon in bread sauce was presented to the table, he began to see himself as a steer being fattened for market, a goose being stuffed for Christmas dinner.
At the mention of Philadelphia, Francis asked if the dish was in honor of their dinner companions on the Britannic, the Walters. He was trying to sound waggish. High-born gents in the movies always seemed to be displaying their waggishness.
“Oh, that awful woman,” Mrs. B said, and she and Anisette shared a laugh. Félicité rolled her eyes in annoyance at another of their Grand Tour in-jokes.
Without looking up from his plate, Mr. Bingham spoke between forkfuls of delicately ribboned ham. “These Walters? Were they Americans?”
“The worst sort,” Anisette said. “Loud and mean and—”
Mr. Bingham’s fork clattered to his plate. He pointed at Anisette as if she were exhibit A in an argument he had been having with his wife. “A little time in Europe and already she’s starting to think like one of them! First it’s her fine British gentleman, and now she’s going on about ‘the worst sort’ of Americans.”
“Daddy, I was only trying—”