The Ashford Affair Read online

  “I shine only in the reflected light of your divinity,” he said. Unlike Val, he didn’t say it superciliously.

  “The reflected light of your divinity?” Val raised a brow. “Does that make you the moon or simply a rather large hurricane lamp?”

  “Better than quivering petals on the cusp of awakening,” retorted Bea, more sharply than she ought.

  “Meow,” murmured Val. “Is someone feeling overblown?”

  “Hardly.” Never show weakness, that was the rule with Val. “Merely bored by present company. Do come entertain me, Raoul. I need you.”

  “Of course.” He took her arm and led her away, sending a glower in Val’s direction for good measure. Val merely smiled in return. Of course he would. Nothing ever flustered Val. He was impervious to all the normal human emotions. Whereas she …

  In just two weeks it would be her birthday. She was almost twenty-eight. Twenty-eight! Just a whisper away from thirty and her life wasn’t anything like what it had been meant to be.

  Everyone had always told her that she was born for greatness. They had told her that her lineage and her beauty were her destiny, and so it had seemed, back in the heady days of her first Season, with all the sons of her parents’ friends tripping over their own feet to dance with her. She didn’t need to stoop to conquer; she conquered simply by virtue of being what she was. At twenty, she had been a prize; by twenty-two, she was ruined. And here she was, at almost twenty-eight, hunted by everyone except her husband.

  She hadn’t expected Frederick to remain faithful. But if he had to stray, why did it have to be with Addie?

  “I wish you meant it,” muttered Raoul.

  “Meant what, darling?” asked Bea absently. Addie was climbing the stairs to the terrace, keeping her eyes carefully on the treads. She wore Bea’s old frock, a green crepe de chine, two Seasons out of date.

  “That you needed me.” Raoul grasped her hands, forcing her to face him. “That you needed me as I need you.”

  “Darling,” said Bea. Such a wonderful, multipurpose word, designed to mean anything one needed it to mean while promising nothing at all.

  Raoul’s eyes glinted in the reflected light of the fires. “Come away with me. Come away with me from all this. They”—his sweeping gesture encompassed the terrace, the dancers, Frederick—“they do not deserve you.” His fingers bit into her arm. “You know it is true. You cannot deny it.”

  No, she couldn’t. Even before tonight, she’d seen it happening, week by week, seen it and pretended she didn’t.

  “Come away with me to Carmagnac,” Raoul urged. Raoul. It was so easy to forget he was there, like a puppy at one’s feet, constantly licking one’s toes. “You shall be feted as a queen—as an empress!”

  She was tempted, so very tempted. Comtesse de Fontaine. It had an attractive ring to it. It was also about as likely to happen as a jaunt around the moon. Raoul’s Catholic family would hardly be thrilled to receive an Anglican, and a twice-divorced one at that.

  “Isn’t there a cousin you’re meant to be marrying?”

  “Adele.” Raoul shrugged her off as immaterial. “Her affections are no more engaged than mine. She will not feel the loss.”

  “Even so, I can’t imagine your family will be all too pleased if you break it off.”

  “They will adore you as I do,” said Raoul with all the supreme confidence of twenty-three. “There can be no question.”

  There could be a great deal of question, indeed, but Bea was too tired to point that out to him. She needed his confidence, his youth; they were a sop to her wounded ego.

  All she had was her beauty, but even that was bound to desert her, burned away by the relentless Kenyan sun, stretched out of her by successive pregnancies. She’d kept her figure so far, but there were lines and sags where there hadn’t been before and freckles that had to be relentlessly kept at bay with patent lotions.

  What happened when her beauty went? What then?

  “You doubt me,” said Raoul. “Do you really believe that I would allow anyone to stand in the way of our eternal happiness?”

  God, he was young. She wanted, so very badly, to believe him, but experience—and Val—had a way of implying otherwise.

  She could just see it now, another embarrassing divorce, another spate of Tatler headlines. They’d marry, in some dreary civil ceremony, only to have his parents pronounce it no true marriage at all. Out the cousin would come from the wings, and there Bea would be again, fallen lower than before.

  “Not allow, precisely,” said Bea, “but families have a way of intruding just the same.” Val had moved to intercept Addie, purely to annoy her, she was sure.

  Now if it had been Val asking her to run away with him …

  “Let me convince you.” Raoul lowered his voice, leaning closer. “I have a plan—”

  “Later.” Bea squeezed his hand and let him go. “I must rescue my cousin. She’s no match for Val.”

  “Vaughn is no match for you,” said Raoul darkly, but he followed her all the same, scooping up her scarf for her, trotting along with it like a page boy following behind his mistress. A pity that such slavish devotion seldom lasted.

  Addie didn’t seem as delighted to see her as one might wish. Bea’s sharp eyes noticed the instinctive move back, the quick tucking of a strand of hair behind one ear. Addie always did that when she was nervous.

  Bea swooped down on her. “Darling! Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “Yes. Very much so.” Her smile was too bright and rather crooked around the edges. “It makes a grand send-off.”

  “A send-off?” Bea looked keenly at her cousin, but Addie’s head was down.

  “Yes.” Addie fiddled with the clasp of her bracelet, another loan from Bea. “I’ve stayed too long already. Six months! I hadn’t realized how long it had been.”

  “You can’t possibly leave until you go on safari,” said Val, looking so innocent that Bea knew he had to be plotting something. “Don’t you agree?”

  Addie shook her ahead. “I’m afraid there won’t be time. I’ve stayed away from England too long as it is.”

  “You hadn’t said anything about leaving before,” said Bea as neutrally as she could, her eyes scanning the terrace for her husband. Something had happened, something between them; she ought to have seen it brewing, months and months of it, but she had been so busy with Val, Val and Raoul …

  “Don’t you want a soft pelt for your bed?” said Val. “You could recline on the skin, like Elinor Glyn. There’s nothing like the feel of a tiger rug beneath your skin—isn’t that right, Bea?”

  “If anyone is to acquire you a skin,” Raoul said to Bea, “I shall. That one couldn’t shoot a cat in a barrel.”

  “Why would I want to go shooting cats in barrels?” Val stretched, lithe as a panther. “There’s no sport in that. It’s like seducing bored wives.”

  Val had a talent for making her feel cheap. But wasn’t she? Twice discarded, first by one husband, now by another. “I’d never think to hear you advocating anything requiring effort,” retorted Bea.

  Val smiled lazily. “For myself? No. But it amuses me to observe it in others. I shall derive a great deal of pleasure from it on our safari.”

  “There won’t be a safari,” said Addie stubbornly. “Not on my account. I’m quite happy to leave the animals alone as long as they leave me.”

  Raoul looked at her in confusion. “You have fellow feeling for the leopardess?”

  “No,” said Addie frankly. “But I have a hearty distaste for the prospect of being mauled.” She looked to Bea for confirmation. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Nonsense!” Bea didn’t meet Val’s eyes—or Addie’s. The vague outlines of a plan began to form in her mind, less a plan and more a series of prospects. One made one’s own fate, wasn’t that what Addie always said? Bea was sick of being buffeted. “You can’t possibly leave Africa without going on safari, darling! What would people say? No. Val is right. We must arrange …
something.”

  “In that case,” said Raoul belligerently, “I also shall go on safari.”

  Bea looked at him limpidly, but her mind was churning, weighing and discarding possibilities. “You didn’t think I’d leave you behind?” she cooed.

  “Splendid,” said Val coolly. “I’ll speak to Budgie. He doesn’t have anything booked next month.”

  Addie stepped between them. “You really needn’t—”

  “Yes,” said Bea firmly, “we do. We’ll all go. You and I and Val and Raoul and Budgie—and Frederick.”

  The name crackled like a dead leaf on her tongue, dead and desiccated. He’d had done with her—and she with him. That much was clear.

  Addie looked anxiously over her shoulder, scrambling for excuses. “But what about the girls? Oughtn’t someone to stay with them?”

  Bea smiled without humor. “That’s what we have a nanny for.”

  Addie grasped her final straw. “Aren’t safaris terribly dangerous?”

  Bea raised her glass, watching reflected flames dance along the edge. “Darling, that’s the point.”

  New York, 2000

  Clemmie went back to the office on Monday.

  Nothing had changed in the two weeks she’d been away, but it all felt strangely out of proportion, the beige walls narrower, the moss-green carpets darker, the long, brown desks in the hallway, at which the secretaries sat, higher than usual, like a familiar object seen in a fun-house mirror. Clemmie’s metal in-box, positioned precariously in front of her secretary’s workstation, was so full that it had tipped over backward.

  Clemmie had walked these halls month after month, year after year, but she felt like she was seeing them through the eyes of a stranger, everything twisted and unfamiliar.

  Helen, her secretary, put a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “Welcome back! Happy New Year!”

  “Happy New Year,” echoed Clemmie, even though it felt anything but.

  Forty-odd hours later, she still felt dazed, uncomfortable in her own skin. She kept expecting to see someone else in every reflective surface she passed, someone who looked different. She didn’t know whether to be confused or relieved when it was always still just her, the same pale eyebrows, the same flapper-cut hair, the same chicken pox scar just to the left of her lips.

  She’d spent the weekend huddled up in her apartment, in her oldest pair of pajamas, watching Twilight Zone reruns on her tiny television, if “watching” was really the word. It was more that she had stared sightlessly at the screen as the pictures went by, sitting in a sort of waking doze, jarred awake from time to time by the shrill ring of the phone.

  Jon had called. And her mother. And Jon again, saying, Hey, Clemmie, I know you’re there. Pick up. She hadn’t. She couldn’t stop replaying that awful moment when Caitlin had stepped out behind him. No more secrets? So much for that. No wonder he had been so eager to hustle her out of the apartment.

  She’d wanted to throw up. She’d wanted to take a machete to him. Instead, she’d murmured something inane, something about just being on her way, and blundered out, out into the almost-January night, her head aching and her stomach churning.

  Bastard.

  “Wait, there’s more mail for you,” said Helen, and dug under her desk for a pile wrapped in a rubber band.

  “Thanks,” said Clemmie, flipping through it as she wandered toward her office. It didn’t look like anything earth-shattering. There was the internal firm newsletter, with garishly colored photos from the staff Christmas party, a solicitation letter from the New York State Bar Association begging her to take advantage of their special New Year’s dues offer, and a copy of the ABA Journal.

  The one thing she was waiting for, the memo announcing the election of new partners, wasn’t there yet.

  Clemmie shouldered open the door of her office, flipping through one more time, just to make sure. Nope, no memo. She was pretty sure the committee had met already. Among the oddsmakers she knew she was counted a good bet. And why wouldn’t she be? She’d spent most of the last seven years in here. As a third year, she’d graduated from a shared office to this one, her own little cubby, with open shelves crammed with black binders and a narrow closet with room for just her coat and a spare suit. She’d spent Christmas in here, Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve. She’d worked through Labor Day weekends when everyone else was out at a pool, and Fourth of July, with the fireworks exploding over the Hudson River in the distance.

  She might not know who her grandmother was, but Clemmie knew this: She’d worked her ass off for this firm.

  She dumped her mail and pulled out her desk chair, the dark fabric splotched with old coffee stains. Her desk seemed strangely empty without its usual litter of half-empty coffee cups. She’d have to get started on that. There was nothing like crappy coffee to start the day off right.

  The phone rang before she could make her escape to the pantry. Not Paul already. The only time he came in this early was when he’d had a fight with his wife. Not fun for anyone.

  She checked the display on the phone. It was an external number. Jon? She didn’t think he had her office number, but it wouldn’t be hard to find.

  “Clementine Evans,” she said crisply.

  It wasn’t Jon. The voice on the other end was very, very cautious and very, very British. “This is Tony Lawton. Er, Rivesdale.”

  Okay, her secretary was really going to have to start doing a better job of filtering her calls. Sorting through papers with the phone tucked under her ear, Clemmie said, “I’m sorry, I’m afraid—”

  The hesitant voice cut in while managing to sound like he wasn’t. “You did me the honor of staying with us a few weeks back?”

  Rivesdale. Crested stationery. A man with cocker spaniel eyes and an endearing stutter.

  “Oh, right! Hi.” Clemmie dropped her sheaf of papers on the desk, setting her feet down flat on the floor in her surprise. “You were the one who was so kind to me.”

  “Not at all,” said the warm voice on the other end. “Not at all. I only hope the situation resolved itself.”

  If one could call death a resolution. In this case, it wasn’t, but she couldn’t say that to the marquess. Rivesdale. Tony. Whatever. “Thanks to you, I made it onto a flight back,” said Clemmie brightly. “I can’t thank you enough.” Damn. There were already new e-mails popping up on her computer screen, some of them flagged in red. “It’s very sweet of you to check in.…”

  “Well, that is to say…” The hemming and hawing went on for some little while. “I had rather an ulterior motive.”

  “That sounds sinister.” Helen had popped her head around the door, trying to get Clemmie’s attention.

  “I should hope you don’t think so. That is, during a renovation, I came across some items that I thought might be of interest to you—about your cousin. Beatrice Gillecote. You did say she was—?”

  “A relative.” He had no idea. Clemmie choked down a slightly hysterical laugh. He had no idea because she had no idea. She had no idea who this woman was, this Bea. Cousin, grandmother, bolter. “You might say that.”

  “Well, if you might be interested, I happen to be in the States. On business. I brought the file with me—on the off chance, you see.”

  “That was very kind of you.” Her voice came out rough and hoarse. She took a deep breath, striving for something more like her normal tone. Whatever this file was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know more. Easier just to hide herself behind the familiarity of her file folders and stained coffee cups and pretend none of it had ever happened. “If you want to leave it…”

  “I’d thought perhaps we might look at it together. Over dinner, perhaps?”

  “Um…” From outside the door her secretary was making frantic hand-waving motions. Line two began blinking madly.

  “Or a coffee,” the marquess said hastily. “I’m in town until Thursday week.”

  “Yeah, sure, that would be nice.” Hele
n was going through contortions and the phone was lighting up like the Fourth of July. “I’m sorry, but I really have to—”

  “Tomorrow night, perhaps?”

  “Sounds great.” Nothing sounded great right now, but maybe if she said it often enough it would start to be true. And she’d liked the marquess—Tony. Whatever. “Just e-mail me the details—cevans@cpm. I’m so sorry, but I really have to go. Work. You know. Bye!”

  It was only as Clemmie jabbed the button to activate the other line that it occurred to her to wonder whether the marquess had been asking her out.

  Not likely.

  On the other hand, she wasn’t the best at picking up these cues. It had taken her half the evening to realize that her first dinner with Dan was a date. Maybe because she hadn’t particularly wanted that dinner with Dan to be a date? As for the marquess—Clemmie pushed those thoughts aside. There was work to be dealt with. And Paul.

  The number on line two was an internal number, Paul’s secretary, Joan. “Hi, Joan, happy New Year.”

  “Hi, Clemmie.” Joan’s voice sounded like someone talking through a handkerchief on a pay phone, low and gravely. She said it was something to do with her tonsils. Clemmie thought it had more to do with her pack a day. “Welcome back.”

  “Thanks.” Amenities concluded, she tipped her chair back and said, “What’s up?”

  “Paul wants to see you. Can you come now?” The question was pure formality; Joan knew as well as Clemmie that there was no saying no.

  Clemmie rolled her eyes at her corkboard. “I’ll be right there.”

  It was classic Paul. Rather than simply call his associates with assignments or, heaven forbid, e-mail them, he liked to summon them into his office. Because, really, walking up and down that flight of stairs was the best use of her time. Once, it had been to ask what she thought of the color of his new tie. She’d gone running from a conference call for that. One of these days, someone was going to bludgeon Paul to death with a yellow legal pad.

  All the same, there was something rather comforting about his pettiness. The world might have gone mad in every other aspect of her life, but here it was still turning on its normal, sadistic axis.