Beguiling the Beauty ft-1 Page 4

  I still can’t believe what happened,” said Millie, pressing another cup of hot tea into Venetia’s hands.

  Venetia had no idea whether she’d finished the contents of the previous cup or whether it had turned cold and been taken away.

  Helena paced the parlor, her shadow long and lean upon the wall. “There are a great many lies and liars involved here. Mr. Easterbrook’s family is certainly a mendacious bunch. Mr. Townsend was capable of a great deal of it. And, Venetia, you, too, have contributed your share in covering for the two of them.”

  It was true. Venetia had lied her fair share. Sometimes people must be protected; sometimes appearances had to be kept; and sometimes her own pride needed preserving, so she could go about her business with her head held high, even when all she wanted was to cower in a corner.

  “The duke, most likely, is not a liar,” continued Helena. “But he has spoken with reprehensible recklessness, presenting a series of unsubstantiated rumors as if they were from the Encyclopedia Britannica. Unforgivable. We can only be grateful that while Americans might have heard of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Marlborough, they don’t know of Venetia and won’t be able to guess her identity from what he’s said.”

  “Thank goodness for small mercies,” murmured Millie.

  Helena stopped before Venetia’s chair and lowered herself so that her eyes were level with Venetia’s. “Avenge yourself, Venetia. Make him fall in love with you, then give him the cut.”

  Loud, dark thoughts had been crisscrossing Venetia’s head like a murder of crows over the Tower of London. But now, as she gazed into her sister’s cool, resolute eyes, the past dropped away, and the thought of Lexington likewise receded.

  Helena. Helena was a woman who made her decisions with an almost frightful ruthlessness.

  If Helena had truly decided that Andrew Martin was worth the trouble, then the die was cast, the board set, the bridge crossed and burned. Millie, Fitz, and Venetia could try all they want. They would not change her mind, not by any means in their possession.

  Venetia could only be glad that her mind had gone largely numb. She could not feel any despair.

  For now.

  CHAPTER 3

  When Venetia was ten, a train had derailed near her childhood home.

  Her father had led the charge in pulling passengers out of the wreck. Venetia and her siblings had not been allowed to go near the scene, for fear it would upset them too much. But they were encouraged to attend to passengers, especially children who’d suffered only minor injuries.

  There had been a boy about her age who bore no visible damages. When sandwiches were set down before him, he ate. When a cup of tea appeared, he drank. And when asked questions, he gave sensible enough answers. Yet it became apparent after some time that he wasn’t entirely there, that he was still caught in the midst of the derailment.

  In the days following Lexington’s lecture, Venetia carried out a similar approximation of normalcy. At her insistence, they departed for their tour of Montreal as scheduled. Braving the cold—barely feeling the cold, in fact—she visited the Notre-Dame Basilica, smiled at the quaintly costumed country folk who thronged the Bonsecours on market days, and admired the panoramic views of the city from the belvedere atop Mount Royal.

  All the while she relived Lexington’s condemnation. And relived the awful days immediately following Tony’s death. For longer than she thought possible, she was but a bystander in her own mind, witnessing the events as if they were happening to a stranger a continent away, and marveling that she should be so removed.

  The first crack in her detachment came three days before they were to leave for New York. She woke up in the middle of that night, her heart pounding, wanting to destroy something. Everything.

  By the time Helena and Millie awoke she was already packed and dressed, her portmanteau strapped to the boot of a hired carriage. If she were to scream and smash things, she didn’t want her family to see her.

  “I’ve decided to go ahead to New York and facilitate your arrival,” she said.

  Helena and Millie looked at each other. In this day and age, all one needed was a decent guidebook and access to a telegraph office to make travel arrangements. There was no need to send a scout ahead to thoroughly modern New York, especially as they’d already applied for and received reservations in one of the best hotels in town.

  Helena began, “We can come with—”

  “No!” Venetia winced at the harshness of her refusal. She took a deep breath. “I’d like to go by myself.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Millie asked hesitantly.

  “Quite. And don’t look so downcast—it will only be two days before you see me again.”

  But they did look downcast, dismayed, and anxious. They wanted to keep her near and protect her. Some hurts, however, were beyond the protection of sisterly love and some wounds better licked in dark, lonely caves.

  “I’d better hurry,” she said. “Or I’ll miss my train.”

  Venetia had once thought she’d made peace with Tony’s memories. She’d lied to herself. There had never been peace, only a tenuous truce with him forever silent and her studiously avoiding the subject.

  And now even that truce had been undone. As her train sped south, she stared at the still-frozen landscape rushing by, while a bewildered, plaintive voice in her head kept repeating the same question. Why had you said such things to Lexington, Tony, why?

  It’s simple enough, you idiot. He wanted someone to believe you were responsible for his death.

  Why this should come as such a bitter surprise, she didn’t know. Perhaps with the passage of time, she’d allowed herself to romanticize the past, to believe that her marriage hadn’t been so suffocating after all, that she’d been no more unhappy than anyone else, and that Tony hadn’t really proved himself anywhere near as mean-spirited a man.

  This, then, was his way to remind her, from beyond the grave, of her misery, heartbreak, and shame.

  Of the truth.

  * * *

  Venetia’s head pounded as she detrained at Grand Central Station. She almost walked past the sign held by her friend Lady Tremaine’s driver. Lady Tremaine, her husband, and their two young daughters had already departed for England, but they’d put their automobile at Venetia’s disposal.

  The manservant, who told her his name was Barnes, guided Venetia outside, to where he’d parked the vehicle. Except for the lack of harnessed horses, the automobile exactly resembled a victoria—the open body, the raised driver’s seat in the front, even the calash hood at the back.

  “Driving hats for you, Mrs. Easterbrook, from Lady Tremaine.” Barnes motioned toward the stack of hatboxes on the seat.

  “Very considerate of her,” Venetia murmured.

  Most veiled hats employed ornamental lattices of fabric meant not to conceal, but to draw more attention to the face. The driving hats from Lady Tremaine, however, were not the least bit frivolous. Not that they were ugly, but their veils were proper veils, consisting of two layers of fine netting that wound all around the brim of the hat.

  “We won’t go very fast in the city,” said Barnes, adjusting his driving goggles, “but you might find a hat useful driving out in the country, ma’am.”

  Venetia unpinned her own hat and set the driving hat on her head. The effect was that of being plunked down inside a fog—not a London pea souper, but the kind of fog she encountered on early morning walks in the country, like smoke flowing on the ground.

  The bustle outside Grand Central Station receded. Barnes cranked the engine, climbed onto his seat, and released the brake. The now dreamlike streets of Manhattan glided by outside Venetia’s translucent cocoon, the colors muted, the buildings smudged at the edges, the passersby blurred in ways that might intrigue modern artists.

  Would that she traveled through her entire life at such a remove, protected from its pitfalls and upheavals.

  They drove for a mile or so before the automobile came to
a stop. “Here’s your hotel, Mrs. Easterbrook. All seventeen stories of it,” said Barnes proudly. “Ain’t it grand? All electric, too—and a telephone in each room.”

  The hotel was indeed very tall, dwarfing its neighbors.

  “Very impr—”

  Venetia froze. Striding down the street toward her, tall, haughty, and impeccably turned out, was none other than the Duke of Lexington. He cast a cursory glance at the automobile and headed inside the hotel.

  Her hotel. What was he doing here?

  Her first instinct was to run. She would lodge elsewhere—she didn’t need seventeen stories or a telephone receiver in her room. She had not escaped to New York to be under the same roof as her nemesis.

  But a perverse pride refused to let her make the request to Barnes. She squared her shoulders. “Very impressive. I’m sure I will enjoy my stay.”

  If anyone ought to run in the opposite direction, it was he, not she. She had not slandered anyone. She had not spread malicious rumors. She had not spoken without regard to consequences.

  A doorman materialized to help her down. The hotel’s porters came to receive her luggage. She declined Barnes’s offer to speak for a room for her, tipped him, and bid him good day.

  Not until she was crossing the onyx-and-marble rotunda of the hotel did she realize she was still fully veiled. The dim interior made it more difficult to see, but she was far from blind. She arrived at the hotel clerk’s station without mishap.

  The hotel clerk blinked once at her appearance. “Good afternoon, ma’am. May I help you?”

  Before she could reply, another clerk several feet down the counter offered a greeting of his own. “Good afternoon, Your Grace.”

  She froze again.

  “Any news on my passage?” came Lexington’s cool voice.

  “Indeed, sir. We have secured you a Victoria suite on the Rhodesia. There are only two such suites on the liner, and you will be assured of the greatest comfort, privacy, and luxury for your crossing.”

  “Departure time?”

  “Tomorrow morning at ten, sir.”

  “Very good,” said Lexington.

  “Ma’am, may I help you?” Venetia’s clerk asked again.

  Unless she abruptly abandoned the counter, she must speak and, at some point, give her name. She cleared her throat—and out came a string of German. “Ich hätte gerne Ihre besten Zimmer.”

  She was running away after all. She balled her fingers, the chaos inside her igniting into anger.

  “Beg your pardon, ma’am?”

  Through gritted teeth, she repeated herself.

  The clerk looked flustered. Without turning, without ever having appeared to pay attention, Lexington said, “The lady would like your best rooms.”

  “Ah yes, of course. Your name, please, ma’am.”

  She swallowed and reached randomly. “Baronesse von Seidlitz-Hardenberg.”

  “And how many nights will you be staying with us, ma’am?”

  She held out two fingers. The clerk wrote something in his ledger. Venetia signed the register with her new alias.

  “Here is your key, baroness. And a walking map of Central Park, which you will find just outside our doors. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

  A hotel attendant ushered her toward the lift, which came promptly, the metallic cage shunting into place with a soft ding. An accordion door folded into the wall; the inner door slid open.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” said the lift attendant. “Good afternoon, Your Grace.”

  Him again. She turned her head a few surreptitious degrees. Lexington stood to the side, slightly behind her, waiting for her to enter the lift. Move, she ordered herself. Move.

  Somehow her feet carried her forward. Lexington followed her inside. He glanced her way, but did not acknowledge her. Instead, he turned his attention to the gilded panels that adorned the elevator’s interior.

  “Which floor, ma’am?” asked the lift attendant.

  “Fünfzehnter Stock,” she said.

  “Pardon, ma’am?”

  “The lady wishes to go to the fifteenth floor,” said the duke.

  “Ah, thank you, sir.”

  The lift was leisurely, almost sluggish, in its ascent. She began to suffocate under her veil. Yet she dared not breathe with any vigor, for fear she’d betray her agitation. The duke, on the other hand, was at his ease. His jaw carried no tension. His posture was straight but not rigid. His hands, folded over the top of his walking stick, were perfectly relaxed.

  Her anger blazed to a firestorm. It roared in her ears. Her fingertips were hot with a desire for violence.

  How dare he? How dare he use her to illustrate his stupid, misogynistic points? How dare he destroy her hard-won peace of mind? And how dare he ooze such cool smugness, such insufferable satisfaction with his own life?

  When the lift dinged into place on the fifteenth floor, she charged out.

  “Gnädige Frau.”

  It took her a moment to recognize his voice, speaking in German.

  She walked faster. She did not want to hear his voice. She did not want to further perceive his presence. She wanted only that he should fall into a pit of vipers on his next expedition and suffer the painful effects of their venom for the remainder of his life.

  “Your map, madam,” he said, still in German. “You left it in the lift.”

  “I don’t need it anymore,” she answered curtly in the same language, without turning around. “Keep it.”

  Christian tossed the baroness’s map on the console table just inside his suite. He pulled off his coat, dropped it on the back of a chair, and deposited himself in the chair opposite.

  Ten days after the fact, he remained astonished by his own conduct. What had possessed him? As a man plagued by a chronic condition, he’d learned to live with it. He carried on. He kept busy. And he never spoke of it.

  Until he did, luridly, at length, in a theater full of strangers.

  He wanted to never think of this gross misstep again, but he kept revisiting his confession—the defiant pleasures of at last acknowledging, however obliquely, his fixation upon Mrs. Easterbrook, the bottomless mortification once he realized what he’d done.

  Perhaps he’d made a strategic mistake by avoiding the London Season and the possibilities of running into her. By staying away, he also deprived himself of a large pool of young women. Who was to say he would not find among them someone who could take his mind permanently off her?

  A knock came. Christian opened the door himself—he’d given his valet two weeks’ leave to visit his brother, who’d immigrated to New York. A very young porter bowed and handed him a note from Mrs. Winthrop, a fellow guest at the hotel who had been throwing herself at him for the past three days.

  Christian badly needed a distraction, but he liked to uphold a minimum of standards in his dalliances. Mrs. Winthrop, unfortunately, was not only excessively vain, but more than a little stupid. Judging by her newest invitation, she also could not take a hint.

  “Send Mrs. Winthrop some flowers with my regrets,” he said to the porter.

  “Yes, sir.”

  His gaze landed on the Central Park map on the console table. “And return the map to the Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg.”

  The porter bowed again and left.

  Christian walked out onto the balcony of his suite and looked down. The height was perilous, the air abrupt and chill. The pedestrians were the size of drawing dolls, jointed mannequins milling about the pavement.

  A woman emerged from the hotel: Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg, as evidenced by her daft hat. The rest of her, however, was altogether shapely—a figure meant for reproduction. Product of evolution that he was, even though he had no intention of procreating with her, he was still coaxed out of his preoccupation to contemplate the obvious pleasures of her form.

  In the confines of the lift, her attention had all but licked him from head to toe.

  He was not unpopular either at home or abroad
. Still, the baroness’s interest had been extraordinarily intense, all the more so for the fact that she never once directly gazed at him.

  Now, however, she did. From sixteen stories below, she looked up over her shoulder and unerringly located him, a glance that he felt through the cream netting that concealed her face. Then she crossed the street and disappeared under the trees of Central Park.

  Venetia was vaguely aware of the trees, the ponds and bridges, the young men and women zipping by on their safety bicycles. The sea lions at the menagerie barked; the children clamored to see the polar bears; a violin wailed the mournful notes of “Méditation” from Thaïs—yet all she heard was the duke’s inescapable voice.

  The lady would like your best rooms.

  The lady wishes to go to the fifteenth floor.

  Your map, madam.

  He had no right to appear helpful and gentlemanly, he who’d judged her as if he knew everything there was to know about her. When he knew nothing—nothing at all.

  Yet she was the one who felt ashamed that her husband had despised her so much. She could have continued in her blissful ignorance had the duke had the decency to keep a private conversation private. But he hadn’t, and his revelation would haunt her always.

  She wanted—needed—to do something to knock him off his arrogant, comfortable perch. Actions carried consequences. He would not decimate her good name and not pay a price for it.

  But what could she do? She could not sue him on grounds of defamation, as he’d never named her. She knew no dirty secrets of his that she could spill in return. And even if she warned every woman under the age of sixty-five of his savageness of spirit, his title and wealth would still ensure he’d have the wife of his choice.

  It was dark by the time she returned to the hotel, her feet sore, her head throbbing. The lift was empty save for the lift attendant, but as it ascended, the duke might as well have been there, taunting her with his invulnerability.