“Sometimes,” he said, “it is a curse to know that one is beneath the same roof as one’s children and grandchildren and parents and aunts and cousins and siblings.”
“And sometimes,” she said, “it is a great blessing.”
She was quite right. Without that knowledge he would probably try to entice her into bed, and that would be enormously wrong. It would be quite in keeping, of course, with the way he had lived and conducted himself for many long years. But now? The earth had shifted on its axis when Adeline died. Recently and for reasons he had still not fully fathomed, it had shifted again.
“You are not a romantic, Viola,” he said.
“It is not romance you have in mind,” she told him.
“No.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb along her lips. “But, regardless, you are safe. My children are beneath this roof. So are yours. And your grandchildren, one of whom I met in an upstairs corridor this morning. An extraordinary child. She introduced herself as Winifred Cunningham, introduced me to herself as the Marquess of Dorchester, shook my hand with the dignity of a dowager, and informed me that she was praying for her grandmama’s happiness and my own.”
“Winifred is given to the occasional flight of piety,” she said. “She is a very dear child.”
“She asked if she might use my library,” he said. “When I informed her that to my knowledge and regret there were no children’s books there, she told me that was quite all right. She had recently read A Pilgrim’s Progress and now felt ready to tackle anything in the literary realm. She might have been my grandchild too if I had married you.”
He wished he had not said that. Good God, why had he? And why did he feel a sudden yearning for . . . for what? It had been a mistake to come here. But of course it had. He had never thought otherwise. That was the whole trouble actually. He had not thought.
“I had better be going,” he said.
“Yes.”
So of course he did not move. He sighed instead. “Viola,” he said. “I wish to God this had not happened.” He did not specify what he meant by this. He did not know himself. His fingers slid through her hair to the back of her head and his other hand went about her waist while her own arms came about him. And he kissed her. Or she kissed him.
They kissed.
For long, timeless moments. Deeply, their mouths open, their arms like tight bands about each other. As though they were trying to be each other or some third entity that was neither and both and something uniquely one. When he drew back, she looked as he felt, as though she were rising to the surface of some element from fathoms deep.
“It is a sad contrariness of the human race,” he said, “that desire often remains even after love is gone. And yes, it is an enormous blessing that innumerable relatives are beneath this roof with us.”
. . . after love is gone. Had he ever spoken more asinine words? And would he believe it if he said it often enough?
He took her hand and raised it to his lips, making her a deep bow as he did so. “Good night, Viola,” he said. “You have only a few hours to endure until it is goodbye.”
He turned and left the room, holding the door closed behind him as though some force were trying to open it and tempt him beyond his endurance.
You have only a few hours to endure until it is goodbye. Good God, those hours could not pass quickly enough for him.
It was, he supposed, poetic justice that he had fallen in love with a woman who would have none of him. He was sure he thoroughly deserved every moment of misery he was about to endure. However, he would push past it. He had a great deal to do, much with which to distract himself.
To start, he had two children . . .
He would go, then, and start getting on with it. So of course he turned about, opened her door again, stepped inside, and closed it behind him.
* * *
• • •
Viola was holding the pink bag of cheap jewelry against her mouth, her eyes tightly closed, fighting a bleakness so powerful it felt actually like a physical pain. And then she opened her eyes abruptly and turned her head. She felt a welling of fury. Oh no, he could not do this to her. Surely . . .
“We were hideously, horribly, dangerously young,” he said. “We were in love and swinging from stars half the time and squabbling the other half like a couple of—” He sawed the air with one hand. “Like a couple of . . . what? Help me out here.”
“Marcel,” she said, “what are you talking about?” She knew, though. But why now?
He strode across the room, thrust back the curtains, and stood gazing out the window—into total darkness.
“You wanted to know,” he said. “I came to tell you. She was eighteen when we married. I was twenty. There ought to be a law. We were no more ready for marriage than . . . than . . . I am having trouble with analogies tonight. We were children, wild, undisciplined children. Would we have settled into a mature relationship given time? I will never know. She died when she was twenty. I killed her. Adeline.”
She set down the bag on the edge of the bed and sat beside it. She folded her hands in her lap. He was right. She had wanted to know. Now it seemed she was going to.
“I adored my children from the moment of their conception,” he said, “or from the moment she told me she was expecting them, I suppose would be more accurate. Not that we knew at the time there would be two. We did not suspect that until almost half an hour after Estelle was born. I had a daughter and a son all within one hour and they were red and wrinkled and ugly and bawling and I thought I was in heaven. We both adored them. We cuddled them and played with them and taught them to squeal with laughter. We even changed a few soggy garments. But we were restless, irresponsible children. We were soon back to our busy social life, dancing, drinking, attending parties until late into the night. It did not matter, of course. We had hired a competent nurse and could safely leave the children to her care whenever we had better things to do than be their parents.”
He braced his hands on the windowsill and rested his forehead against the glass. Viola’s hands tightened in her lap.
“They had been teething for some time,” he said, “but usually one or the other of them would be crying from it but not both together. But this particular time it was both of them and their nurse had been up most of several nights in a row with them. When we got back late from an assembly, Adeline went to bed while I looked in at the nursery. I was supposed to follow her immediately. We were feeling . . . amorous. But the poor little things were in distress, and the nurse was pale and heavy eyed and admitted when I pressed her that she had a splitting headache. I daresay it had been brought on by exhaustion. I sent her to bed. When Adeline came to find me, I sent her away too. She was furious with me—and with the nurse for going. She returned at dawn when I was still in the nursery. I had just got the two of them to sleep, one on each shoulder, and was wondering if I dared try putting them down.”
Viola spread her fingers in her lap and looked down at them when he stopped. He did not resume his story for some time.
“She was still furious,” he said. “She told me she had not had a wink of sleep and was going to dismiss the nurse as soon as morning came. I told her in a whisper not to be ridiculous and to hush, and she came rushing at me, all outrage, snatched Estelle from my arms, and set her down in her crib. To be fair, I had not spoken nicely to her even though I had whispered. Estelle woke up, of course, and started crying again, and then Bertrand woke up and started crying too. And when Adeline tried to snatch him away from me, I—” He stopped a moment and drew an audible breath. “I shoved her with my free hand and she stumbled back and . . . and I think she tripped on the hem of her dressing gown and reached behind her to steady herself against the wall. Except that the window was there and it was wide open. I had opened it earlier because the children were feverish—even though both the nurse and Adeline strongly disapproved of fresh air under such circumstances. She—” He stopped again to draw a ragged breath. “I tried to reach her. I tried to grab her, but she was gone. I do not know what I did with Bertrand. I do not know how I got downstairs and out on the terrace. I did not know who was screaming. I suppose I thought it was her until I realized she could not scream because she was dead.”