An Encounter at the Museum Page 2
“You have your parents love? And they love you in equal measure?” he asked. “How fortunate you are.”
“You do not?” she said, and then wanted to bite her tongue. Highly, highly improper and intrusive. One simply did not discuss such things.
He smiled, a lifting of his lips that lasted but a moment, yet it pierced her. His smile was sardonic and gentle at once.
“I do. They do, if I had to judge, though I think parental love of a child is not quite of the same intensity as the child’s love of parents, do you? A parent, by all proclamations, would give his life for his child. Would a child do the same for his parent?”
“In a manner of speaking, I would say a child would.” Was she not marrying Lord Redding, and was it not for love of her parent? She would not marry him without that prompt.
“In what manner of speaking?”
She tapped the book in front of her. “In a marriage manner of speaking. Juliet was to marry to please her parents, out of love for them.”
“And she did not. She married against their wishes.”
“With dire results.”
“Tragic results,” he said, his blue eyes staring quite speculatively into her own. She neither lowered her gaze nor squirmed, though it was an effort not to. “She married according to her own wishes, and had she been left alone, she would have lived happily and not died tragically.”
“I don’t suppose Mr. Shakespeare had that moral in mind when he wrote the play.”
“Do you not? I should have said that is precisely the point he was making. Marry where your heart directs, not according to your parents whim and wish.”
“You are in an unhappy marriage, sir? I am sorry,” she said, determined to end this conversation, and equally determined to continue it.
She was caught by him, a bit of poetry owing to the muted hush of the Reading Room and the slanting golden light cast by the high windows. It was a moment out of time, out of the normal course of her day and the trajectory of her life. She was to marry, to please a parent and improve her future children’s position in Society. It was all entirely common and not worthy of a tragedy. That she felt the brush of anguish and lost dreams in the deep well of her most secret thoughts was also not worthy of comment. She was simply doing her duty. Women and men did their duty every hour of every day.
“I am not married. Which I think you guessed,” he said. “You are too sheltered to have believed otherwise.”
“I certainly have been sheltered. It is hardly an insult.” She closed the book, prepared to leave, or at least threatening to leave. She hoped he took her point.
“No, ‘tis not, however . . . .” He reached across the table and opened the book, flipped a few pages, and then read in a hushed voice, “‘If love be rough with you, be rough with love.’”
“You would have me be less sheltered so that I might be rough with love? To what purpose?” she said, motioning for him to pass the book to her, which he did. She shuffled through the pages, back and forth a bit, and then read, “‘These violent delights have violent ends.’ And so I believe.”
Yet she was not at all certain that is what she believed, even if she knew full well she ought to believe it. She had been carefully reared, after all. Yet James made her feel things and want to risk things that were entirely out of her sphere. Things that must remain out of her sphere. She was so beset by opposing thoughts and feelings that she might need to confide in Elena.
Then again, perhaps not. Looking into his startling blue eyes, she did think that perhaps Elena was best kept in ignorance of James. Some things one simply did not wish to share, not even with a sister. Especially with a sister who looked exactly like her.
James did not take the book from beneath her hands. He looked across the wide table at her and finished the quotation she had begun, “‘These violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume.’”
“‘Therefore love moderately; long love doth so,” she said, truly finishing the quotation, or so she thought.
James left off the friar’s advice and moved to another part of the play for his next quotation. A conversation of quotations, a most literary conversation, and yet so entirely improper. “‘Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.’ And so I believe. And so it is done.”
His look was so intense and so forlorn, a look of passionate melancholy, yearning desire, frustrated intent. It quite consumed her. She sat, trapped by his gaze, the power of his presence, the raw virility of the man; she tried to tear herself free. She had to get free of him. She was engaged, or nearly so, to another. She was not free. She had never been as free as this man enticed her to be.
“I must go,” she said, not moving so much as a finger.
The book lay between them. Next to James, a man pulled out a chair and sat down with a stack of books bound in red leather. Neither of them paid any attention to him.
“I would quote ‘parting is such sweet sorrow’ but I won’t. I don’t want you to believe that I require Shakespeare to be my Cyrano,” James said, smiling at her.
The man with the red leather books made some disparaging sound in the back of his throat, and opened one of his books with crisp authority.
She had read Cyrano De Bergerac just last week and the quotation, ‘All our souls are written in our eyes’ came to her then, a strong thrust of truth. She had thought she’d understood the words when she’d read them in another tragic love story of love misplaced and thwarted, Roxanne choosing the wrong man when the right man was before her the whole time, but now, looking at James, she knew now that the words were of him, about him, right now. These eyes. This soul. This man.
Why was she reading tragedies of love? She was in no such position.
Was she?
“I must go,” she repeated, her soul seeming anchored to the spot. She did not want to leave him, this stranger who thrust a sword into all her father’s plans without even knowing he did so.
The Reading Room was more than half full now, the tables topped with stacks of books bound in green, red, and brown leather, the noise level rising, the warders circling. She must go. She had overstayed her time. Elena would ask questions she did not want to answer.
“Must you?” he said.
She almost shook her head no. Almost. The bustle of the room saved her from that folly. “Yes.” She stood, a monumental act of resolve. “It has been interesting.”
“Literary discussions usually are.” He stood, facing her.
She must make herself turn her back to him and walk away. It was not so difficult a thing to do; she walked out of rooms every day of her life.
“Goodbye,” she said. Parting was such sweet sorrow. But she would not say that to him.
“I am on my way out as well,” he answered, standing. “I will accompany you.” He did not ask her. She could not have said what her answer would have been if he had.
They made their way, she leading, out of the Reading Room. There were always far more men than women in the Reading Room, she supposed because one was required to make an appointment to make use of it and appointments were not lightly granted. She was not engaged in any important research. She simply enjoyed reading ancient texts and reading them in the magnificence of the British Museum. She also enjoyed getting out of the house once a week upon an errand in which she could be unaccompanied. She came by sedan chair, perfectly respectable, but once past the porter of the museum, she was as alone as it was possible for her to be.
Would Lord Redding require her to give up her weekly visits to the Reading Room? She must find occasion to ask him. She did hope he was prepared to be reasonable about it.
As they entered the magnificent hall, the door before them, she slowed her steps. Once through the portal and into the light, she was no longer free.
“You have a chair?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You have far to go?”
“Mr. Caversham, Mr. Semple will see you now,” a warder said, interrupting them.
Mr. James Caversham. What a lovely name. She had never heard of him. He must not have a fortune or a title or else she would have. She was going to marry Lord Redding. She must forget ever meeting James Caversham.
“I am engaged at present. Our meeting must be rescheduled,” James said, turning to the warder.
“But, sir, Mr. Semple’s schedule is quite full---”
“As is mine,” James said, sounding annoyed.
But Elizabeth could hear no more. She climbed into her sedan chair and was out of the gate before James could stop her. She had no reason to believe that he would have tried to stop her. She did like to imagine that he would have, somehow.
As this was not a romantic tragedy, she left without any mishap whatsoever. It was completely disheartening.
He followed her on foot until she reached Charing Cross Road and then, what with an overturned fruit cart and three other sedan chairs trying to push through a break in the snarl at the same time, he lost her.
Jamie could not have said why he followed her, not without severe embarrassment to himself.
He was smitten.
It was as simple and as inconvenient as that. Though, truly, smitten was such a ridiculous word to describe what had happened to him in the British Museum. He was . . . changed. He would never be the same, never think any thought that did not somehow touch upon her, never do any act that did not consider her welfare at its heart. He was in love. He loved. There was no obstacle too onerous, too horrendous, too monstrous to keep him from her, to prevent him from having her at his side for the rest of his life.
Of course, not knowing her full name or address was a minor hiccup to any plan he might like to make, such as marrying her and carrying her off to Canada with him. He had to know her name, had to know where he lived so that he could find her and win her. He would win her; he knew he would. All he had to do first was find her.
His mother’s closest friend, Sophia Dalby, was the best person to ask. Sophia knew everyone and everything, or so it had always seemed to him. That Sophia was his mother’s closest friend meant that, naturally, he did not want to ask her.
A man in love did not want his mother to be privy to it, at least not at the start. Perhaps never. He was not sure as he had never been in love before, but now that he was, he knew that he didn’t want Sophia joyfully telling her dear friend over tea and cakes that her darling son had gone and fallen in love with a woman without knowing her name.
That’s what women did. They laughed about such things. Perhaps not cruelly, but they did laugh. He was not in any frame of mind to be laughed at.
It was with the greatest sadness that Jamie decided he could not approach Sophia and her endless knowledge of events and people about Town. As she had just returned from a two year visit to America, she likely did not know Elizabeth’s family anyway.
Who, then? Whom could he ask? Someone who had been in Town, someone who would be an instant ally, someone who understood the necessity for discretion.
Of course.
Jamie smiled and set off for King Street. He knew the perfect woman.
Lady Staverton, Anne, had done quite well for herself. Her mother had been a courtesan during the same period that both Sophia and his mother had. That his mother had been a courtesan for approximately two days before being taken up by his father for the rest of both their lives was something that Jamie had known from his first steps.
He was not shocked by it, nor by that side of life. He knew that women made the best of what they had been given, some succeeding better than others. Sophia had succeeded far beyond the norm. Anne’s mother, Emma, had done far worse.
Anne and he were of an age. They did not know each other very well, but they knew each other well enough to be easy in their shared history, if not their shared experiences. Anne had been married once to a naval officer and then again to Lord Staverton, quite a coup, and Sophia Dalby had been instrumental in both marriages. Of that Jamie had no doubt at all. It was just the sort of arrangement at which Sophia excelled.
Staverton House, on King Street, was quite magnificent. Jamie knocked the dust off his hat and was promptly admitted by a very grim looking butler. Before he could work out how he was going to ask Anne for what he needed, he was ushered into the library.
He was made to wait. It was not an unpleasant wait; the room was quite attractive and equally grand, though it did not have the feeling of a room that was often used.
He walked the length of the library, yellowed oak bookshelves from floor to ceiling along one wall, a trio of matching walnut standing bookcases on the short wall, a series of landscapes of British locales dotted about the room. He walked back again. And walked forth again. The paintings covered the range of England vistas, from seaside to mountainside, from dale to heath. It all looked quite proper and managed and tamed, not at all like Canada. Canada was rugged wilderness and deep forest and raging rivers. It was uncivilized, at least in the way England measured civilization.
He wanted it. He wanted to plunge into that, fighting for his place in that developing, surging land. North America was growing, exploding out from whatever boundaries England or France placed upon it. He would thrive in such a place. He was certain of it.
The door opened and Lady Staverton entered, looking fresh and lively in a gown of pale green with ribbon trim.
“Mr. Caversham,” she said. “What a lovely surprise.”
He made his bow and she her curtsey. Anne Staverton was a remarkably attractive woman. Her hair was red, her eyes were greenish, and her skin was flawless. She had a nice bosom and graceful arms. He could acknowledge all that and feel nothing more than mild appreciation; she was like a sister to him in all the ways that mattered.
Anne, using one of her graceful arms, waved him to a seat upon a deeply cushioned sofa upholstered in burgundy red velvet while she took her seat upon an armchair in matching fabric. He waited to speak until she had arranged herself.
“Lady Staverton,” he said, “I do hope you are sincere. I have burst in upon you and if you send a bad report to my mother, I shall be in for it.” He smiled as he said it.
Anne Staverton answered him with a similar smile. “Mr. Caversham, you are the most charming liar of my acquaintance. Now, how may I assist you? I am entirely at your disposal.”
As a reply, it was a bit overblown. For a fleeting moment he wondered what was happening in her own life to prompt such a dramatic response, but the moment passed. He had to find out who Elizabeth was. Time was flying past him; he could feel that it was. He had to act quickly or he would lose her. He must not lose her now that he had just, almost, found her.
“May I first tender my condolences upon the death of Lord Staverton? He was beloved of all who knew him.”
Anne’s eyes grew soft and dewy. “How very kind you are, and how very true the sentiment.”
“I do have something to ask of you, Lady Staverton. I need information, the sort of information that only women truly know.”
He said it with a smile, a polite look frozen upon his face, but his heart raced, each beat the ticking of a clock, the urge to hurry, hurry bearing down upon his chest like an anvil.
“You want to know about another woman?” she asked, smiling in amused sophistication.
“Precisely,” he said, smiling briefly in return. He must keep this civil, light, amusing. He must not, could not, reveal his urgency or his desperation. He did not trust himself to leash the lion once it had been released.
“Please, you must address me as Anne. We share too much history for such formality.” He nodded in acquiescence, his blood bounding . . . hurry . . . hurry. “But why not ask your
mother?” she asked. “Surely she knows everyone and everything.”
His mother may have been merely a mistress in the eyes of most of the world, but in London she was Aldreth’s mistress and had been at the center of Aldreth’s life, and therefore the workings of the ton, longer than most. She might not have been received in certain houses, but she was treated cordially by all, nonetheless. She did, truly, know all. She saw no reason to hide in shame simply because she and Aldreth were not wed.
Zoe was French, after all. No amount of time in England would change that.
“There are certain topics one does not open with one’s mother,” he said.
“Women?”
“Women.”
“Who is the woman?” Anne asked.
“Before I reveal her name, I must ask for your confidence, Anne. If my mother knows, then Sophia will soon know, and if I asked Sophia for this information, she would surely reveal all to my mother. I trust them both, but I want to . . . that is, there are certain times . . . ”
“When a man does not want his mother involved,” she said, finishing his thought.
“Yes. Simply that. The situation, as all dealings between men and women ever are, is complicated.”
He saw compassion and empathy move across her lovely face, a swift dance, and then she was composed once more.
“Of course. The woman?”
“Her name is Elizabeth. She is blond, beautiful, blue-eyed. A simple miss, so she informs me. She lives west of Charing Cross.”
“No last name? No address?” she asked, her brows raised slightly.
He did not care how it sounded, or how it appeared. The only thing he cared about was finding her. He had to find her.
Jamie shook his head. “I met her in the Reading Room of the British Museum. I followed her home, or nearly so.”
Anne’s eyes had gone quite wide. “Oh, my.”
Jamie barked a short laugh. “Yes. My thoughts precisely.”
“Your intentions?”