He stepped into the room and moved around the bed closer to the lump. He lifted a corner of the covers. She was curled up into a ball, fully clothed, her hair rumpled, the one cheek that was visible flushed.
She /must /have been tired. He smiled. "Sleepyhead," he said softly, "you are in danger of missing dinner." She opened her eyes and turned her head to look up at him. She began to smile. And then she turned sharply away and curled into a tighter ball. "I am not hungry," she said.
Did her flush denote a fever? He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek, but she batted at his hand and turned her face even farther into the mattress.
He raised his hand, leaving it suspended above her. "What is the matter?" he asked her. "Are you un-well?" "No." "Something has happened?" he asked her. "Nothing." Her voice was muffled by the mattress. "Go away." He raised his eyebrows and set both hands behind his back. He stood looking down at her. /"Go away?" /he said. "You are lying here when it is almost dinnertime?
Yet nothing has happened?"
A thought struck him suddenly. "Your courses?" he asked her. "Have they begun?" "No." Was /that /the trouble, then? But it was supposed to be /morning /sickness, was it not? "Vanessa," he said, "will you look at me?" "Is that a command?" she asked him, turning over almost violently onto her back and glaring up at him through untidy hair. Her clothes were twisted about her. "Yes, my lord. Whatever you say, my lord." He frowned. "I think," he said, "you had better tell me what has happened." And he felt a sudden sense of foreboding. /Con./ "I will not share you," she said, pushing her hair back from her face with one forearm. "You may say I have no choice since I have married you. And you may say that I am obliged to obey you and grant you your conjugal rights whenever it pleases you to exercise them. But if one person can break vows, then so can the other even if she is merely a woman and therefore a nonperson. I shall scream very, very loudly if you ever try touching me again. It is no idle threat." Ah, yes. Con. "I can see it is not," he said. "Of what do I stand accused?" "Of harboring a mistress when you are a married man," she said. "It does not matter that she is beautiful while I am not. You knew that before you married me. And it does not matter that it was /I /who asked /you /to marry me. You might have said no. But you did not. You married me.
You made sacred vows to me. And you have broken them. You will not be my husband ever again, except in name." "Are you quite sure," he asked, shaken and slightly angry too, "that Con gave you accurate information, Vanessa?" "Ha!" she said. "You are going to try to deny it, are you? Were you or were you not at Mrs. Bromley-Hayes's house today?" Ah. Not Con after all. "You see?" she said when he did not immediately reply. "You cannot deny it, can you?" "Anna called here?" he asked. /"Anna," /she said scornfully. "And she calls you /Elliott/. How cozy! I met her in the park. Go away. I do not want to see you again today. I wish it might be never." "Will you let me explain?" he asked her. "Ha!" she said again. "Go away." "You wished to explain yourself when I discovered you weeping over your dead husband's portrait," he reminded her, "and I did eventually listen to you. Things are not always as they seem to be." "She is /not /your mistress?" Her voice was more scornful than before. "No," he said. "Ha! Mrs. Bromley-Hayes is a liar, then?" she asked him. "I do not know what she told you," he said.
He waited.
She flung back the bedcovers and swung her legs over the far side of the bed. She got to her feet and smoothed her hands over one of her smart new walking dresses, which was going to need far more than hands to make it look presentable again. She passed her fingers through her hair, keeping her back to him. "I am listening," she said. "Anna was my mistress for most of last year and the year before," he told her. "If that fact offends you, Vanessa, I am sorry about it, but I cannot change what is in the past and would not if I could. I was not married then. I did not even know you then." "I do not suppose I would have provided powerful competition even if you had," she said. "When I brought you and my mother and Cecily to town before our wedding," he said, "I called on Anna to tell her that I was to be wed.
She quarreled violently with me and I left. I thought that was the end of the matter, but it seems it was not. She appeared at the theater two evenings ago and at the ball last evening and I realized that I had not looked her in the eye and told her specifically that our affair was at an end. And so I called upon her today to do just that." "And you also told her I was tired after yesterday," she said.
He hesitated. "I suppose I did," he admitted. "How dared you even mention my name to her," she said, turning around and looking him very directly in the eye. "I am sorry," he said. "It was indeed in poor taste. Did she lead you to believe that we are still lovers, Vanessa? On the assumption that you would never confront me but would allow the lie to fester in your mind?
She does not know you at all well, does she? We are not lovers and have not been since I affianced myself to you. I would not have expected her to be capable of such spite, but apparently she is. I am sorry from my heart that you have been hurt by all the sordidness of the end of an affair." "Do you /possess /a heart?" she asked him. "You spent last night in this bed with me. I thought you were coming to care for me. But the first thing you did this morning was go to your mistress." "I called upon my /ex/-mistress, yes," he said. "I have explained why I felt it necessary to go there." "But you did not feel it necessary to tell me you were going?" she asked. "No," he said. "Why have you ended the affair?" she asked him. "Because I am married." She smiled fleetingly. "Not because you are married to /me/?" she asked him. "Just because you are married? Well, that is something, I suppose. It is admirable, perhaps. But how soon will it be before this noble sense of morality wears thin and you take another mistress?" "Never," he said. "Not as long as we both live." "I suppose," she said, looking down at her hands, "you had other mistresses before her." "Yes," he said. "All beautiful, I suppose." "Yes." "How can I - " she began.
He cut her off, speaking rather harshly. "Enough of this, Vanessa," he said. "/Enough! /I have told you that you are beautiful and I have not lied. Even if you cannot trust my words, surely you cannot disbelieve my actions. Does my lovemaking not tell you that I find you both beautiful and irresistible?" Her eyes filled with tears and she turned sharply away again.
Her insecurities about her looks ran very deep, he realized. Probably she did not even realize it herself. She had cultivated cheerfulness as an antidote. But when she was robbed of good cheer, she was defenseless against hurt. "I /wish /she had not been your mistress," she said. "I do not like her.
I cannot /bear /the thought of you - " "And I cannot bear the thought of you with young Dew," he said, "different as the circumstances are, Vanessa. I suppose we would all like to believe that our life's partner comes to us as fresh and new as a babe, that there has been no one else but only us. But that is impossible. You had done almost twenty-four years of living before you met me. I had done almost thirty before I met you. Yet if neither of us had done that living, we would not be as we are now. And I like you as you are now. I thought you were starting to like me." She sighed and dropped her head. "Whose idea was it to approach us at the theater and to come to the ball last night?" she asked him. "Hers? Or Constantine's?" "I do not know," he said. "Both, probably. I ought to have robbed them of power by immediately telling you all: /Oh, by the way, that lady sitting next to Con is my ex-mistress, who perhaps does not even know that she is an ex. I am sorry, but I promise to be a good boy for the rest of my life. /It would have solved a lot of headaches, would it not?" She turned her head over her shoulder and half smiled at him though her face was wan. "It would have ruined the play for me," she said. "Would it?" She nodded. "And has the knowledge now ruined your marriage for you?" he asked her. "Has it ruined the rest of your life?" "Elliott," she said, "you /are /telling me the full truth?" "I am." He looked steadily back at her.