The Ashford Affair Page 19

  “No one told me,” said Clemmie, tight-lipped. Jon had been living in a different state, and he knew. She was all of forty blocks away, and she hadn’t.

  “Maybe you didn’t ask,” said Jon, and put the car back into gear. “Damn. I’m sorry, Clemmie. That was crappy of me. It’s just been…” He groped for words. “It’s just been a long two days.”

  “No need to apologize.” Clemmie leaned stiffly back against her seat, staring up at the folded sun shield. There was no need to apologize when it was true. “I’ll just take that nap, okay?”

  “Clem—”

  “It’s fine,” she said quickly, keeping her eyes closed. “Just drive.”

  At her waist, her BlackBerry buzzed and buzzed again.

  THIRTEEN

  New York, 1999

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “Huh?” said Clemmie blearily. She must have fallen asleep under her desk again. “I didn’t mean—I’ll be just a—”

  Her heel scrabbled against a tiled floor and she came fully, unpleasantly awake. Her mouth felt gummy and her back hurt.

  This wasn’t her office. It took her a moment to remember where she was, cramped in an awkward chair, in a gray room whose fluorescent lights only contrived to make it look grayer. A dusty poinsettia sat on a side table and tinsel drooped along the top of the window frame. It had come unmoored on one corner, one side drifting dispiritedly down. There was an electronic menorah on a side table, unplugged. One of the bulbs was missing. Someone had taped paper angels and snowflakes to the window, but the white paper had already turned a dirty gray.

  Her contacts had glued themselves to the corners of her eyes. Blinking, she saw two Jons, both of them blurry.

  “You were asleep,” he said unnecessarily.

  Behind him, between the paper snowflakes, Clemmie could see twilight streaking the sky above the park. Evening again. She had been here for more than twenty-four hours and Granny Addie hadn’t once woken up. There had, from time to time, been vague flurries of activity involving machines and things that beeped, but, in the end, the official word was always the same: no change.

  “What time is it?” she croaked. She scrabbled at the arms of her chair. “Has anything—”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Nothing like that.”

  A sudden, unreasoning wave of panic cut through the fog of fatigue. The last she remembered, her mother had been pacing one side of the room while Aunt Anna sat elegantly in a chair on the other, idly flipping through a magazine, the sort of magazine so strongly scented that Clemmie had been able to smell the perfume clear across the room. Now Aunt Anna’s chair was empty, Clemmie’s mother’s, too. Even the phantom smell of perfume had gone.

  Clemmie struggled upright, the vinyl padding squeaking in protest. “Where’s Aunt Anna?”

  “She’s right outside. She went out to take a call.”

  Clemmie regarded Jon suspiciously. “And my mother?”

  “Badgering the nurses.” Jon regarded her with something dangerously close to pity. Clemmie scowled at him. He said gently, “They’ve got it under control, Clemmie. Take a break. Go home.”

  Home. Her cluttered box of an apartment on West 52nd Street, where she hadn’t even bothered to put up drapes. What was the point? She was hardly ever there. That wasn’t home. Home was Granny Addie’s apartment, with the brocade drapes with the tassels, with the ink stain on the carpet where Clemmie had dropped a calligraphy pen when she was ten, with its familiar smells of potpourri and lemon oil and Lancôme liquid foundation.

  “Go home,” Jon repeated. “You look wiped. You’re not doing anyone any favors by wearing yourself out. They’ll call you if … if there’s any reason to.”

  Clemmie shook her head. Her apartment was all the way across the park in midtown; Rockefeller Center was virtually impassable in tourist season, even if one could find a cab, which one probably couldn’t.

  “My apartment is too far away,” she said bleakly. “What if something happens?”

  She didn’t have to elaborate on what she meant by “something.” She wasn’t sure she could.

  “Then come to my place,” said Jon reasonably. “It’s closer. You’ll be able to get back here in five minutes. You can nap on my couch.”

  “What? No bed?”

  “And let you get too comfortable?” His voice was gently mocking. “That would ruin the whole martyr routine.”

  Clemmie shot up in her chair. “That’s not fair.”

  “Made you move,” he said. “Look. You’re dead on your feet. And how long have you been wearing that suit?”

  Clemmie didn’t even bother to try to count. “Since the Ice Age. I think of it as my pelt.”

  “Yeah, and it’s starting to look like one, too. I can’t offer designer clothing, but I can offer a shower and some shrunken T-shirts.” He held out both hands, palms up. “Take it or leave it.”

  Clemmie’s shirt felt suddenly very itchy. She caught herself scratching and made herself stop. The idea of clean clothing—not to mention clean hair—was sinfully tempting.

  “Are you sure it’s only ten minutes?” she asked warily.

  Jon knew when he’d gotten her. “Less by cab,” he said. “I’m right over on 111th and Amsterdam.”

  “Let me check with Mother.” Clemmie hauled herself painfully to her feet, using the armrest to propel herself up. The metal handles felt sticky to the touch. Her legs felt as unfamiliar and inconvenient as those of the baby fawns’ in Bambi, wobbling at the knees and trying to go the wrong way. A wave of dizziness made her sway.

  “Whoa, there!” Jon caught her by the arm.

  Clemmie wiggled away. “I’m fine. Really, I am.”

  Jon cautiously let go. “There’s no need to be Superwoman all the time.”

  Clemmie let out a snort. “Ha! I’m not even Batgirl.” Batgirl had always struck her as a singularly ineffectual superperson. But what could you expect when she was called girl? “Wait here?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Jon.

  By now, Clemmie could have found the way to Granny Addie’s room blindfolded. She opened the door cautiously, but the machines that surrounded her grandmother seemed to be silent, nothing bleeping or squawking. Granny Addie lay as still as an effigy on a tomb, her body incredibly shrunken and small even in the narrow hospital bed. Clemmie’s mother sat beside her, at the slight remove necessitated by the wires and tubes, all the apparatus keeping Granny Addie tenuously tied to life. The heartbeat measured on the monitor seemed to Clemmie’s untrained eyes to be perilously faint.

  There was a book in her mother’s lap, a Dorothy Sayers mystery—her mother had always liked mysteries; Clemmie had hurriedly purchased a pile for her at the bookstore at Heathrow, just in case—but she wasn’t reading. She wasn’t sleeping either. She was just sitting there, staring into space, her shoulders slightly hunched beneath the jacket of her gray tweed suit.

  “Mother?” Clemmie ventured, and the woman in the chair turned abruptly.

  The harsh light seemed to strip the skin from her face, peeling her down to the bone, emphasizing the sagging flesh at neck and chin.

  She looked, Clemmie realized with sudden fear, old. That, of course, was wrong; she was Clemmie’s mother; she wasn’t supposed to age, not as the rest of the world aged. She had always been old, in that she was older than Clemmie’s friends’ mothers, always solidly rooted in middle age, even when Clemmie was little. She was middle-aged and she had stayed that way, with the same hairstyle, the same clothes, the same heavy foundation and subdued lipstick, the same blouses with bows at the neck and skirts made of variations of tweed and plaid for winter, beige linen for summer.

  “Mother?” Clemmie repeated with concern.

  Her mother leaned back in her chair. “You startled me,” she said shakily. “You look so like her. So like—” Breaking off, she shook her head, as if to clear it. “What time is it?”

  “It’s five forty-five.” Clemmie kept her voice low. “Jon
suggested I go back to his place to wash up. He says it’s only ten minutes away. I think he’s afraid of being downwind of me.”

  Her mother nodded without looking at her, pressing her fingers to her temples. “All right.”

  “I can stay with you—if you like.” Clemmie edged closer, wanting to comfort her but not sure how. They had never been a physically affectionate family. It seemed almost a breach of etiquette to reach out to her, a kind of presumption, although it was so very clear that she was hurting, hurting badly, with no one to talk to. “If I can help—”

  Her mother’s shoulders stiffened. “Go with Jon. The last thing I need is you getting sick now.” Brusquely she added, “I told Jon not to call you. There’s no point in everyone being here.”

  But she wasn’t everyone. She was—and there Clemmie stuck. It wasn’t as though Granny Addie didn’t have other grandchildren, but Clemmie had been the one on the spot, always. Well, almost always. But she couldn’t exactly come out and announce, I know Granny Addie loved me best, especially not now, when it sounded so petty and pointless. And if she felt this way, how must her mother feel? Clemmie had never really thought about her mother and Granny Addie in those terms—Granny Addie was always somehow peculiarly hers, her mentor, her second mother—but she was her mother’s mother. There were years and years and years there of which Clemmie knew nothing. Her mother, always so fiercely independent, had relied on Granny Addie more than any of them liked to acknowledge.

  Clemmie wished Mother and Aunt Anna were closer; that might have made it easier for them, to have someone to talk to, to comfort each other in a way that Clemmie couldn’t.

  As if that were ever going to happen.

  “You will call me if anything changes?” Clemmie pressed. “If Granny wakes up, or…”

  “Yes! Yes.” The book slipped from her mother’s lap and she grabbed for it just before it fell.

  “I’ll be at Jon’s if you need me.”

  “That’s fine,” said her mother, and went back to her lonely vigil.

  In her hospital bed, Granny Addie said nothing at all.

  London, 1920

  “Darling, what’s wrong?” Bea caught up to Addie just outside the cloakroom.

  “I’ve had enough, that’s all.” Addie struggled into her coat, jamming an arm into a sleeve and looking as though she were about to burst into tears. “I hate nightclubs. I’m going home.”

  “But the night’s just begun.” Bea held out Addie’s sleeve for her. “It’s that Desborough, isn’t it? What did he do?”

  “Nothing, really, Bea. He’s just—oh. I feel like such a fool! Never mind. I just want to go home.”

  “You’re not taking a taxi by yourself.” Bea collared Geordie Pillbrook, still sporting his ill-gotten helmet. “My cousin’s not feeling well. See her home, won’t you, darling?”

  Like most men, he responded well to direct orders. It was a pity it didn’t work on Marcus anymore.

  Bea didn’t want to think about Marcus. It was much more satisfying to fight someone else’s battles. Yes, that was she, a regular—what was that goddess’ name? The one in the breastplate with the spear, usually seen posing fetchingly on people’s ceilings. Addie would know.

  What had the bounder said to her to make her look like that?

  It wasn’t hard to find Mr. Desborough. He was propped against the wall like an illustration of dissolution, glass in one hand, cigarette in the other. Smoke drifted up around his face as he lifted the cigarette to his lips.

  “Such an inspiring image of British manhood,” said Bea acidly. Drawing a cigarette out of its silver case, Bea fitted it into her holder. “What did you say to Addie? She looks like death. If you hurt her, I’ll have your eyes out.”

  His eyes lingered on her red-lacquered fingertips. “You have the nails for it. Don’t worry. I’ve only been cruel to be kind.” He obligingly produced his lighter but paused before clicking it into light, holding it just beneath Bea’s cigarette. “You set this up, didn’t you? You’ve been waiting for this.”

  “Right now,” said Bea, shaking back her shingled hair, “I’m waiting for a light.”

  He clicked the lighter, producing a flame that shuddered in the breeze. He cupped it with one hand. “Don’t play games. Do you know what I think?”

  Bea leaned into the flame. “I suspect you intend to tell me.”

  He clicked the lighter shut, shoving it back in his pocket. “I think you were jealous.”

  Taken aback, Bea coughed on an indrawn breath. She hastily blotted her tearing eyes before she smeared her kohl. “Really, Mr. Desborough! Don’t flatter yourself.”

  He wasn’t rattled by it. “Not that way,” he said, and she noticed that his speech was just a little too careful, the enunciation a little too correct. “The other way around. You’d never had a real rival for her affections before, had you?”

  “You are making yourself tedious, Mr. Desborough,” said Bea coldly. “Be a dear and go off and bore someone else? That is,” she added cattily, “if you can remove yourself from that wall without toppling over. I shouldn’t like to see you go splat.”

  Mr. Desborough leaned back against the wall. “Don’t worry. You’ve won. I’ve removed myself from the lists. I’ve fallen on my own lance in the most gentlemanly way. I’ve used up my last chivalric instinct and I am left darkling.”

  He was talking sheer gibberish. Bea raised her eyebrows at his empty glass. “Someone’s been sampling a little too much of the old Adam and Eve.”

  “If you mean original sin? I’m wallowing in it. If you mean the drink? That, too. It’s a fallen world and I intend to be prone before the end of the evening.”

  “Don’t let me impede you,” said Bea, but instead of walking away as she ought, she looked at him curiously. Where most of her set were boys, oversized boys, still redolent of the playing fields of Eton, as exuberant and mannerless as puppies, Desborough usually gave the impression of being effortlessly in control of himself and his surroundings.

  Not tonight. His evening togs were still impeccable, his bow tie tied, but his hair was rumpled where he had leaned against the wall and there was a tremor to his wrist as he took a glass off a passing tray.

  Bea snagged another, watching as he downed half of his in one smooth slug. “You’re not usually sloppy. What cast you over the edge? Don’t tell me it’s unrequited love.”

  Fleetingly she remembered Addie’s pale face and felt a pang of guilt. Infatuation, she told herself. That was all. Addie was better off out of it. She’d thank Bea for this someday.

  “Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” Desborough pitched his cigarette onto the flagstones, grinding it into the ground with one quick, efficient motion. “Did you know Kenneth Cartwright?”

  “Not to speak to.” She did know the name, though. He’d been in her brother Edward’s house at Eton. Edward had thought him a frightful wet. “He wrote poetry, didn’t he?”

  “You use the past tense advisedly. He wrote, now to write no more. ‘For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, / Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. / Who would not sing for Lycidas?’” At Bea’s look, he said, “He’s killed himself. Stuck his head in the oven and turned on the gas. He survived the gas in the trenches only to gas himself in his own bloody oven. How’s that for poetic irony?”

  “I’m sorry.” It sounded painfully inadequate.

  “I am, too,” he said. “It’s a bloody waste. The War got into his head. He couldn’t stick it. So he stuck his head in an oven instead.”

  Bea couldn’t think of anything at all to say.

  “God help poor old Cartwright.” Desborough shook his head and the rest of his body swayed with him. “He wanted to translate Dante. Instead, he found himself in Inferno, without a Beatrice to help him find his way out.” He looked meaningfully at Bea.

  Bea wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about, but one thing was very clear. “Don’t look to me to rescue you,” she said tartly. �
�I’m too busy making a muck of my own affairs to bother with ruining anyone else’s.”

  Desborough raised a brow. “With one notable exception. Your cousin.”

  That was different; Addie was Bea’s in a way that no one else was hers. Addie needed her, had needed her ever since that night she had been presented to the nursery at Ashford, all tousled hair and confusion. She’d needed Bea to tell her how to get on then and she still needed Bea to tell her how to get on now.

  Not that it was any of Desborough’s business, with his ridiculous ideas about jealousy. As if she were jealous of Addie’s friends! Addie was the one who relied on her, not the other way around. She’d be delighted if Addie found someone, someone nice and kind and patient who’d take care of her, a schoolmaster, perhaps, or a budding parson. Addie would make an excellent vicar’s wife. Not now, of course, but by and by.

  “Isn’t there something about the exception that proves the rule?” Bea said flippantly. “Addie hasn’t anyone else to look after her. I’ll need at least one good deed if I’m to get into heaven.”

  “And she’s your good deed? She might resent that.”

  Bea bristled. “She certainly can’t be trusted to look after herself. She hasn’t a worldly bone in her body, poor darling.”

  Mr. Desborough leaned back against the wall, regarding her with open amusement. “So you’ve set yourself up as guardian of her virtue?”

  Bea frowned at him. “You make it sound positively medieval. Let’s just say that I help to weed out the rotters.”

  That took the smug look off his face. “Meaning me.”

  Bea shrugged her bare shoulders. “You said it, not I.”

  He raised his brows. “You have more wit than you pretend.”

  “Thank you for your glorious condescension.” Bea blew out a long plume of smoke. “Speaking of my cousin, you appear to have given her a crashing headache. What did you say to her?”

  “I told her to get shot of me. I told her I was a bad lot. In short, I performed your office for you.”