I’D ARRIVED BACK IN London from Scotland in the middle of May, just one year ago, in desperate need of money and no longer able to turn to my long-suffering stepfather. Yes, at twenty-two, I’d burned that bridge beyond a doubt; my mother never wished to hear from me again. What was open to a young woman of my reduced means? Not very much that was appealing: Governess? Hideous. Lady’s companion? Perish the thought. I’d heard rumors of women on the continent who spent their lives pleasing men, but didn’t fancy it. What if the man was not to your liking? I’d just escaped from that exact torment and wasn’t eager to put my neck in the rope again any time soon. The person I was most keen to emulate, and quickly, was the famous Madame Vestris, though the theatre was not my world and I didn’t know exactly how to go about becoming part of that milieu. But I wanted it. Needed it.
I took myself to George Lennox’s lodgings as soon as I’d found rooms for myself. George had been a revelation in bed after Thomas, my erstwhile husband. I’d thought George and I were made for each other. I’d thought we had a future. Of course he’d never told his wealthy parents about me, nor anyone else in his life that mattered. Just his theatre friends and club mates, the jolly riffraff he collected.
He was at home—this time, alone. And very surprised to see me.
“Don’t worry, George, I’m not here for you,” I said, swanning into his drawing room and flinging my reticule down on the chair upon which I’d found him bouncing the fat, white ass of a third-rate actress named Angel six months before. “I need a favour.”
“Do you know your heel of a husband has sued me?” George retorted. “He’s filed papers suing me for ‘criminal conversation’ with his wife—that is, with you.”
I had to laugh at the legal euphemism.
“Well, he’s suing me for divorce,” I said. “When’s your court date?”
“Middle of September.”
“Mine is earlier. I don’t think I’ll be here.”
“For God’s sake, Rosie.”
“I’m serious—and don’t call me that.”
“Where’ve you been, anyway?”
“Mouldering in Scotland with my damned relatives, no thanks to you,” I snapped. “I need the name of the very best teacher in London, George. Acting teacher. And don’t you dare laugh.”
It was all so hard to believe, standing there looking at him, that day of my return. The man I’d loved to distraction. I’d wasted my stepfather’s present of a nest egg on him; George always seemed to be short when it came time to pay a bill. It had all ended when, planning his twentieth birthday celebration, I’d been tripping around for presents and edibles. I was close to his lodgings and needed a rest before our big night, so I’d stopped there. He was at his club—or so I thought. For a moment I didn’t recognize the sounds coming from behind his door. My brain didn’t take it in. I used the key, the door swung wide, and there at the end of the corridor was the coarse, slatternly actress George had taken me to meet one night after a musical play: Angel. Stark naked but for her boots, straddling a similarly naked George. My parcels tumbled to the floor, and before I knew what I was doing I’d grabbed up George’s riding whip from his hall table, rushed towards them flourishing it, and walloped the blowsy slut across the shoulders several times. She fell backwards howling as George wrenched the whip from my hand. Angel scrabbled crab-like across the parquet towards her crumpled, abominable clothing.
“You filthy, lying cad!” I’d screamed at him, and then advanced on the tart. “Put your clothes on and get out of my house!”
George grabbed my arm in a viselike grip. “Not your house, Rosie. Mine. I didn’t expect you. Leave her alone.”
I’d twisted away and grabbed up the whip again, but quick as a flash he’d held the end. We wrestled wordlessly, glaring into each other’s eyes, ’til it snapped. Then I spat at him. And he—the rat, the louse—stood there, naked, his member still half stiff with unfinished business, my spit trickling from his cheek onto its tip, while Angel moaned away in the corner. Oh, I could have killed him. I could have died. I wish I had, one or either. And then he gutted me.
“Go away, Rosie,” he’d said.
Just seeing him again, still handsome and still rich, I needed to hurt someone! Scream!
“Acting lessons, let me think . . .” He was musing away, stroking his sideburns, and I longed to give one a mighty yank. “Miss Fanny Kelly might do. She set herself up with her own theatre and school last year.”
“Fanny Kelly?”
“Drury Lane, acted with Kean. Decades ago now.”
I longed to give him another cut with a riding crop; his new one lay on the hall table. “Thank you for nothing.” I retrieved my reticule and swirled past.
“You’re a fine piece of horseflesh, Rosana. Keep your looks and you’ll go far.”
“And you’re a provincial little stink-brain. Say hello to Mama.”
Damnable man! Could all this peril and international skullduggery really have begun with that one suggestion for an acting teacher?
That balmy May, I knew that I had become a ravishing young woman. (I like to believe I still am, but after all I’ve been through . . . I won’t think about that now.) My best features are my thick and lustrous blue-black hair, eyes that sparkle like sapphires, high, pert breasts, and the smallest of waists. I have an instep like no other—an asset for dancing—so arched that it appears almost tortured, though of course it is not. My legs are long, strong and shapely from years of riding and running about as a young savage in India—chasing monkeys up into the trees, riding my hairy pony at breakneck pace across the rifle range. My fingers are slim and elegant, my lips naturally full and dark crimson (particularly when I bite them). For these and other reasons, I had realized I must strike while the iron was hot, let nothing stop me from climbing as high as I could in as short a time as possible. But what was I wishing to climb towards? I wasn’t too sure about that. I fancied fame, but wasn’t sure why. I wished to be known for something, to excel at something, but I didn’t know what. I yearned for love, but I was head shy, thanks to that cad George, though horses and men (for the most part) were high on my list of pleasures. I was a simple creature, I admit that, why not?
Miss Fanny Kelly’s school was situated in Soho, on Dean Street. I strolled past and was lucky enough to spot the woman herself getting out of her carriage. She was showily dressed, obviously a woman of the arts, possessing confidence and gusto. A little given to fat, but not too much considering her age.
I booked an appointment for the following morning and dressed myself in my best turnout and bonnet. Miss Kelly saw me in her office, a commodious room on the second floor. She came swiftly to the point: “A guinea per hour is the fee.” I couldn’t help but gasp, but recovered by turning it into a delicate sneeze. “God bless you. Now stand.”
I did so, and she went on, “Walk away from me, let me see you.” I stalked rather self-consciously to the window, then wasn’t sure what she wanted next. “Mmpf. Turn around—gracefully!” I suppose I hadn’t.
“Now, take up the fan on the windowsill there. If I ask you to show anger, for example, while using the fan, how would you do so?” I snapped it open and fanned myself vigorously. “Oh dear. And jealousy?” I did so again, but with slightly less force. She was beginning to confuse me. “Put that down. Show me your best curtsy.” I did, and she looked very severe.
“Now I would like to hear you recite. Use these lines,” she snapped, and passed me a sheet of paper on which was written one of the Shakespeare sonnets.
I cleared my throat. “Shall I compare thee—”
“Oh, stop.” She wasn’t even looking at me. I was beginning to feel anger for real. “Try to modulate your voice—and separate your words. Go ahead.”
And the grueling interrogation went on in this manner. Finally, Miss Kelly pulled a delicate pocket watch from inside her bodice and studied its face. “Your voice is . . . tiny. No potential for amplification whatsoever apparent. Your movements are jerky, unrefined. Yet I think you have something, some quality, which I cannot put my finger on. I will take you, twice a week, for two months. After that, we shall see.” She held out her hand. “One guinea, then.”
Now I had another difficult problem, thanks to Miss Kelly’s exorbitant fee. I could no longer luxuriate (or equivocate) with scruples. This required a game plan—and the strategy of a marshal in the field.
I took myself to the dining room of one of the very finest hotels and asked to be seated at a prominent table. Then I busied myself with the contents of my reticule. A brace of gentlemen approached, one at a time, but were startled off by something or other. Then a man—smelling strongly of lavender—slid his well-dressed bottom onto the seat beside mine. “Excuse me, miss,” he cooed, “but are you here on your own?”
This was so exactly what I had imagined might be said that I almost burst out laughing. I looked up and recognized a gentleman I’d seen several times before at the theatre; he had a kind face, a high colour, and a wicked light in his eyes. I admit I was extremely nervous when I answered, “I am here alone, yes. To my chagrin.”
“Not any longer,” said he, and leaned towards me. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord James Howard Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury. You may call me Howard.”
“And I am Eliza Rosana Gilbert.”
“Delightful.”
He was a member of the House of Commons and a generous, happy peer. He’d only recently become both of those things: His wife had convinced him to cease his travels abroad and come home to “do something useful.” Then his father died shortly thereafter. I liked him immediately because of his well-travelled outlook, his love of foreign ways and foreign foods. He was in the first flush of middle age and very pleased with himself. He ordered us a splendid meal, and I ate every scrap. I watched him devour his sweet and felt again the first tingles of anxiety as he licked his fingers clean, apologizing for his appetite.
“Not at all, I find it appealing in a man,” I said.
“Will you find this appealing, I hope?” he replied. “I have a room on the fifth floor. Will you follow me there in, say, five minutes?”
Now I must make the leap, I thought. But what could I do? The die was cast. The waiters had already been observing me archly throughout the course of the meal. No time for a sudden burst of shyness now; it was too late for that, surely. But how to go about it? My heart was skipping around in my chest in trepidation. The marshal marshaled her forces. “I cannot think what you mean, sir. I am not one of those women.”
“No, no, of course not. Forgive me for implying . . . The truth is, I happen to have a sweet necklace—mostly diamonds—that I have been visualizing all evening clasped around your little neck, to set off and enhance your many charms. May I please, Miss Eliza Rosana . . . ? Present it to you with my compliments?”
Probably a gift he’d purchased for his wife, to be presented upon his return to the country at the end of the week. Never mind, he could buy her another.
“I would be charmed to see it.”
“Room five hundred and ten.”
Ignoring the muted insinuations of the waiters, who spoke to each other behind their hands as I waited the five minutes, I was surprised to find myself so apprehensive. I’d never been to bed with a man so much older. I didn’t know what to expect. Would I have to do all the work? Would it be embarrassing? What would his appearance be, naked? Outside his door, I hemmed and hawed; perhaps anticipating this, the earl opened the door before I even knocked and ushered me in. Then, we just looked at each other. A funny grin came over his face, and he stepped closer. “You are so very lovely, my dear,” he said, and then he kissed me sweetly and deeply. His lips felt like those of a younger man, and soon I could hear that his breathing was accelerating like that of a much younger man. For my part, I felt shy, which was surprising—but also I was now intrigued. What would it be like?
“Eliza Rosana, may I make your intimate acquaintance?” he asked me.
That made me laugh, which felt good.
“I take that as a yes?” And he kissed me again, before turning me around and helping to unlace me. At every step of the unlacing, he murmured his admiration and kissed each new piece of me. It was really quite endearing. As I stepped out of my dress, like Aphrodite upon her clamshell, he stood still as a statue, drinking me in.
And then things sped up. Although rather stout, Howard could fling his clothes off with remarkable alacrity, and he took such noisy enjoyment in all the various remaining stages of necktie loosening, breeches unraveling, boot unscrambling, and so on that he had me laughing long before he lay me back on the bed. I find laughter a wonderful tonic in the bedchamber, and luckily he did too. It had been such a long time since I’d been with a man (all of the six lonely months I’d endured in Edinburgh) that I was soon energetically enthusiastic. Never mind the pretense of modesty, and real skittishness, that I’d begun with. I enjoyed the honesty of his protruding tummy, like that of a two-year-old playing in his washtub. Howard was a man well past the point of holding back because of some self-imposed vanity. He let himself be exactly who he was, running my dark hair through his hands and burying his nose in the scented locks, tickling my skin with the tips of his fingers, letting loose a yelp of joy when he experienced his pleasure, then holding me in his arms for a little sleep afterward, which he seemed to need and treasure. I found it all interesting and different; I was aroused, certainly, but not in the feverish way that George had incited. I wasn’t called upon to race to a swift conclusion, as such—and so, in the contradictory way of these things, I enjoyed a lovely pleasure of my own, which reduced my jitters marvelously. And I adored the necklace, which he introduced with a flourish once we awoke from our nap. He asked me to sit up—I was still stark naked—and he reached to the bedside table, opening a velvet box. My first diamonds! He laid them carefully against my skin and did up the clasp. They were very cold, and then all at once as warm as my blood. I fell in love then and there; I never wanted to take them off. It turned out he had earrings to match, and before the end of that first evening I had them as well.
The next six weeks were busy. My trial date was set for August; Thomas was actually going through with the divorce. I could hardly credit it and was saddened when I considered that he really must have hated me. The earl remained obsessively discreet, so most of our subsequent meetings took place in my lodgings. He’d have large baskets of food and drink sent over beforehand; he would arrive after dark, trailing the night air and his sense of boyish pleasure in being bad.
And my days were full of Miss Kelly’s bossiness. I’d had no idea that trying to become an actress was going to be such hard and tedious work. The lessons took place in her large, airy workroom, high above the street, with plenty of windows and a lovely smooth wooden floor. She was always carefully dressed, and so was I—as well as I could manage, that is. Some of my dresses were terribly out of date, since India has always been interminably behind the times when it comes to fashion, and my stepfather’s Scottish relatives had done little to mitigate this situation on my behalf. This was an ongoing embarrassment to me, and several times I caught Miss Kelly looking me up and down with a Londoner’s disdain.
Her favourite teaching tool was the work of Congreve, particularly The Way of the World. She was greatly enamoured of the fan.
“The women duel, too, Miss Gilbert, but verbally. Feel the thrust and parry of the words, and the literal pointing up—often with the fan—of the wit.”
When I thought of fighting a duel, however, my body couldn’t help but tense and long to physically rush about. “No!” she would cry. “Ladylike, ladylike! Far too much physicality.”
“But what the character wants is aggressive!”
“Not for the women; that is not how they operate. Formality on the surface, hostility well hidden. Have you seen the Spanish women with their fans?” She snapped hers in my face. “All fan gestures to men have sensual implications, and the slower the movement the more intense the implication. Do you follow me?”
“Oh yes.” My fan caressed the imaginary arm of a grandee, moving lower, and ending with a mischievous flick.
At this, she gave me quite the look. Perhaps it was this little indiscretion, this braggadocio, on my part that gave her the dastardly idea in the first place. The woman would do anything for money.
“Where were you raised?”
“Many places,” I told her. “India.”
“Aha. That odd, displeasing lilting—it is barbaric, stop it at once.” She looked me up and down in a calculated manner. “Where else have you lived?”
Still hoping to impress, silly me, I lied, “Oh, Paris. C’est joli!” I’d been accustomed to fabricating, teasing provincial young girls during the many dreary years I’d lived at the Ladies’ Boarding Academy in Bath, lonely and bored with my real life. At age twelve I’d declared I would go by Rosana because it had a Continental zing, and had severely exasperated the Misses Aldridge by refusing to answer any longer to Eliza.
“Spain?” Miss Kelly prodded.
“Sí. Seville for a summer, and of course Madrid.” Pure invention.
“Then how can you be so dense about the power of the fan? Other than carnal, which you seem to understand all too well.”
In the middle of the second month, Miss Kelly finally allowed me to play a scene, with herself as my partner. For reasons unknown to me, she had invited a strange little man with dyed jet-black hair and an appearance of being shriveled by the sun. She didn’t bother to introduce us, just had him sit off to the side while we went at it, and being observed by this fellow, who contorted himself into excited shapes and squiggles (in turn grabbing his hair, covering his eyes while peeking through his fingers, then corkscrewing his legs around one another)—well, I failed the scene utterly.
“You cannot seem to grasp the first rule of the theatre, Miss Gilbert!” an exasperated Miss Kelly cried, flinging down her pages. “You do not actually feel this, you portray it! God in Heaven!”
“But I wish . . . I want . . .”
“Wishing and wanting will not bring it to you, girl. I give up, you are not an actress.”
“But I must be something!” I began to tremble, horrified to have come so far and have spent so much only to be told I was terrible.
“You possess an impressive self-importance, this is true,” the termagant continued. “A strong will. And an abnormally restless body. Perhaps you are a dancer. Although, since you have no training there, that is likely also an avenue that is closed to you. What do you think, Mr. Hernandez?”
The dark little gnome leapt to his feet and pointed one toe. “Maravilloso. I think she will do, Miss Kelly. She is exactamente what we—that is, I—am looking for.”
“Good. Then I’ll leave you.” And without further ado, other than to take my guinea from me, my teacher swept off.
I was at a loss. Here I was, sweaty from effort, left to deal with this stranger who thought I would do. Do what?
“Do you speak Spanish, Miss Gilbert?” His thick accent drew out every vowel in a greasy manner, especially when he spoke my name.
“That is not one of my languages, I regret to say, monsieur.”
“But you do speak languages?”
I wondered where this was leading. “Of course. French, impeccably. Latin, German. Hindi, including several dialects.”
“I am a dancing master, Miss Gilbert. I teach the dances of my country, of España. Do you know the dances to which I am referring?”
I had a vague idea. Spain had been in the news a great deal during the past decade, with the so-called Carlist Wars and England’s dithering attempts to support Spain’s Queen Regent, who’d been ruling the country until her young daughter, Isabel, came of age. All I’d gathered at that point was that an upstart younger brother of the recently dead king believed he should be king, not the girl, because of some ancient law or other. The country had taken sides and civil war had ensued. I didn’t understand the politics; it seemed horribly convoluted—still does, God knows.
“Do you teach the stamping step? I’m sorry, but I don’t know the name.”
“All of that,” he answered eagerly. “Boleros, and cachuchas, fandangos. Refined versions, for the English palate. Not quite so . . . scandalous?” Why was he leering in that dreadful manner? “You have a mysterious past, Miss Gilbert,” he continued. “There is something that you are running from?”
He was almost hissing the words now, his smooth accent making it all the more sinister. How did he know?
“And—may I say—you have the acquaintance of a particular aristocrat, a gentleman who has been more than kind to you in your hours of need?”
The little shit had been spying on me! I could think of no other explanation. He pointed his toes again, one after the other, with a mincing hop in between.
“I am like the English raven, Miss Gilbert. I keep my eyes open, and I fly very swiftly to deliver the news.”
I really didn’t like the sound of this. And Miss Kelly had effectively handed me over to this tiny dago, wiping her hands of me in an instant.
“Mr. Hernandez, I do not think that I am interested in your proposal.”
“Miss Gilbert, I think that you must be. I shall teach you everything I know about the cachucha and flamenco, and in return you will meet a man who will introduce you to your destiny.” He spoke in such an odd, affected way, and God knows his words were to prove both prophetic and dangerous. “What do you have to lose?”
I should have said “Everything” and run away as swiftly as I could. But I didn’t. Truthfully, I didn’t know what else to do, since my lessons in acting had ended so abruptly. And he’d made me the slightest bit curious—always a weakness. “Very well,” I agreed with a haughty sniff. “I shall come to one lesson, and then I’ll decide.”
“¡Maravilloso! ¡Buena fortuna!”
By this time it was late July, and my trial date was approaching steadily. I could have cried with exasperation at the money and time lost with Miss Kelly. Instead I sat down to enumerate my skills and talents, and the earl helped me lengthen this list when he arrived with a lovely set of peridot earbobs.
“Maybe this is what I am, in my natural state—a dancer.” I was sitting up in bed, naked, eating a currant bun, wearing the earbobs and trying out the idea. My lovely earl had set me up in a tiny apartment near the theatre district and had spared no expenses on the softness of the mattress. Was I a kept woman? I tried not to think about that.
All things Spanish had become quite à la mode because of the recent Carlist skirmishes, and I certainly approved when the earl presented me with a long-fringed shawl and a cunning pair of fashionable shoes. I went to my first dancing lesson wearing them proudly. Hernandez made me take both off at once. I was given an old, dingy pair with steel heels, which clicked alarmingly when I walked. He also had a flounced skirt that he made me wear instead of my own, and we spent a good deal of this first lesson swinging those flounces just so. This turned out to be part of the stamping step, as I had called it—an integral element of flamenco. To my surprise, I enjoyed the whole thing a great deal because he encouraged me to rush around in circles, or click my heels up and down in an increasing rhythm and work up a passion, to not hold back and be ladylike. By the end of the session, I was using the fan liberally, not as a gesture but as a cooling agent, and I had begun to answer Hernandez’s excited exclamations with a few of my own. “¡Fabulosa!” he’d squeak, and “¡Deliciosa!” I’d gasp back.
Several lessons and two weeks later, Hernandez seemed to have something on his mind. We proceeded as usual for the first thirty minutes, rushing around the front room in his second-floor apartment (which had been cleared of furniture, the better to teach his pupils in, I assumed). Then he asked me to take a café solo with him. We sat looking out his window at the street below while a diminutive young woman served us the thick, black coffee. “Your daughter?” I asked, once she had left us. “Wife,” he corrected sternly. I still didn’t like him very much, so I did not feel too humiliated by my blunder.
“Miss Gilbert,” he finally said, “I have something to tell you which you may find of great interest.” My mind raced: A theatre manager had heard of me already and was hoping to sign me? A person unknown had died and left me a huge sum of cash? Hernandez corkscrewed his legs and then unscrewed them immediately. “I have now heard from my superior in France, and, as I guessed, he is very concerned to see you face-to-face. He is a generous man; he will pay for your expenses to France, where he will instruct tell you what he wishes you to do.”
“Your superior? Wants me in France? Whatever for?”
“You are a very promising student of the Spanish dances, Miss Gilbert. You have the fire and the light in your eyes. I think you could be very successful, sí?”
This sounded exciting, and though I didn’t quite trust him, I was intrigued.
“I also do not think you have much money.” He placed his little wrinkled hand on mine. “My superior will—how do I say—sponsor your travel to Paris. He is not interested in you as a woman, let me assure you. Or . . . not only as a woman. As an associate.”
How curious. How devilish. What on earth could he mean?
He went on to tell me that if the meeting were successful, this man would cover my further expenses to Spain, where I would live and study the language, the dances, and the customs, for as long as I wished to be there. “Or,” he concluded, “to put it another way—for as long as you need to be absent from England.” He thrust out his foot in its soft small shoe, examining the instep as he said, “Especially with August almost upon us. At His Majesty’s Court of Arches?”
He knew about my divorce date! He knew when and where it would take place! This was terrible! Did he also know how fervently I longed to skip out, ignore it, run away? “I really have no idea what you are talking about, Monsieur Hernandez. Good day to you!” As I clattered down the steep flight of stairs to the street, still in his dingy steel-heeled shoes, my heart was greatly distressed. I looked up at the window and he twinkled his fingers in a secretive wave. I flew straight home, sending word to the earl at the House of Commons, where I knew he was in session: “Please come immediately. Dastardly plot. ERG.”
When Howard Harris of Malmesbury arrived, I had worked myself into a lather. I hadn’t told the earl about the impending divorce, but he certainly could see that I was shaken. He took a deep breath, retrieved an ice bucket with champagne and two glasses, and attempted to winkle from me the worst of it.
“You know I lived in India when I was a little girl?” Despite my agitation, I needed to tread carefully. I couldn’t afford to lose the earl’s good opinion. “Then my mother sent me back here, out of her way, to a school in Bath. At any rate, when I was sixteen, she arrived to return me to India to marry an old judge or something.”
I didn’t mention the unsavory details: her breaking the news of my impending future with the crustaceous judge, and the way I threw a fit. Furniture flying, vases smashed, screams and recriminations. I would have done anything to escape the hideous trap I could feel closing around me. My mother’s new shipboard acquaintance, who kept hanging about—a certain Lieutenant Thomas James, home from India on convalescent leave—had begun escorting me to my academy and then back at the end of the day. True, he’d seemed initially keen on my married but flirtatious mama, but, well, what can one expect? I was sixteen, she was thirty. When he finally suggested, stammeringly, that we elope, I was ecstatic and said yes with a squeal of delight and the first deepthroated kiss I had ever attempted. It seemed to do the trick.
“I married Lieutenant Thomas James, instead,” I told the earl. “It wasn’t a rational thing to have done, and I soon regretted it.”
“You didn’t love him?”
“I didn’t know what love was. We were cruel to each other—he drank too much and then slept like a boa constrictor. Oh, it was terrible.” Quite a lot of champagne was spilled over the bed linens at this point, as Howard Harris tried to comfort me and I tried to pick and choose carefully the things I would admit to and the things I wouldn’t dare reveal.
“Finally, after we’d arrived in India, married, and they could see for themselves, my mother and stepfather realized that the match was a disaster and if they didn’t help me I would be forced to do something even more drastic. My stepfather, Major Craigie, gave me a bank draft for one thousand pounds to help me get established, and he and Thomas sent me back to England, to be met by Craigie’s sister and taken to their parents in Edinburgh.” Instead, cue the cad George, I thought to myself, but of course didn’t say.
“My dear girl. What you have been through.” I arrested the earl’s roving hand at this point and tucked it away safely in his lap.
“The point is, you see . . .” I faltered. “I did not go with Aunt Catherine. I stayed in London. I ran through my funds—which is a disease very common to the purses of ladies who have never been taught the value of money—”
“And this is where I found you?”
I nodded plaintively. “Perhaps Thomas has met someone else,” I sniffled, “but I am appalled at the idea of standing up in front of a judge, of being called a . . . Well, I don’t know what. In public! I’m so ashamed—” And I wept stormily.
Certainly divorce is considered a dreadful blot, particularly for a woman. But ashamed? That was not quite true. Perhaps it’s my upbringing—boarding schools, distant, uninterested mother, who knows—but it seemed so unfair that a stranger could pronounce judgment on me. Why should I have to stand up and be scolded by some ill-humoured, antique fart in a long wig? None of his business. Pooh on them all.
The earl’s eyebrows were creased with concern. “And your dancing teacher . . . has found this out?”
“He wants me to go to France, meet some old duffer for some reason I don’t understand, and then go on to Spain. They want me to do a few things for them, which sounds nefarious. He says they will pay all my expenses. But why?”
We mulled this over until Howard Harris became too distracted to be of much further use. When we were quiet again, and over another glass of the now-flat champagne, he said, “I know a fair amount about Spain’s recent upheavals, Liza. You must be very careful, should you decide to go. The Spanish are devious and love nothing better than intrigue and revenge. The Neapolitans are the same. Years ago while in Naples I met Spain’s then-future Queen Regent, María Cristina. She’s still deeply loved in some circles. Do you know much about all of this?”
“Only the minimum.”
His eyes were twinkling. “Cristina was tall, fair, and blue-eyed, and had stayed single until she was twenty-three because she was waiting for a suitor who would make her a queen. But she’d caused her father no end of worry since, like all Bourbons, she was highly coquettish. I was told, in fact, that some of her admirers had found themselves in jail for having too openly admired this royal tease.”
The twinkle made me think he’d been one of those warned away.
“I happened to be there just as the announcement of the impending marriage to King Ferdinand of Spain was being arranged. I was introduced to her, and she truly was bewitching!”
I gave him a smack and he kissed me.
“Now, now. I was presented to her at court, and instead of casting down her eyes, she stared at me boldly, then took hold of one of the buttons on my uniform, to see, as she said, the inscription on it. Her mother, the queen, indignantly called to her to come along, but not before that tug had registered on a lower part of my anatomy and Cristina—the minx—knew it.” That lower part began to rise again, just in memory. She must truly have registered in Malmesbury’s imagination to cause such an elevation again so soon.
“The marriage took place, which was a great blow to the upstart brother Carlos’s supporters. Cristina immediately became pregnant.”
“What does this have to do with Señor Hernandez’s offer?”
Malmesbury laughed and pulled me under the covers. He whispered into my ear, “You’re not a political animal, are you, Liza? Cristina’s baby was a girl. A few months later she was pregnant again—another girl. Then the king died suddenly of a violent bout of apoplexy, and the stage was set for chaos.”
At this point, we indulged again in a little chaos of our own and emerged ravenous. I brought some comestibles back to the thoroughly destroyed bed and while we ate, the earl mused, “The war is over now, everything is tranquil. Before you turn this opportunity down, Liza, consider all of the amazing things you’d see and hear in Spain. You might have a chance to meet royalty—perhaps even some of the people I’ve just described. Royalty doesn’t have to obey rules as you and I do. It makes them both interesting and dangerous.”
I imagined this was true. I liked the rich. (I didn’t know many of the obnoxious prats at the time.)
He threw a plum into his mouth and chewed its flesh hungrily. “What about this, then, sweetheart? What if I were to match the money offered by this mysterious stranger in France? Your court date will still proceed, even if you’re not there to make an appearance. Unless of course you’re planning to object to the charge?”
“Oh, no. I am not.” From this I knew he suspected adultery was the incriminating factor. Did he think less of me for it?
“Well then.” Juice was all over his chin, but this seemed no hindrance to his enthusiasm. “You’re excited about your Spanish dancing lessons, and this way you’ll be able to drink in the sights and sounds of Spain for yourself, firsthand. I admit I would be extremely interested to hear how the people, and the lovely Cristina, are faring. You could curtsy, eye her as boldly as she eyes you, and give her warm greetings from the 3rd Earl of Malmesbury. It would be fun.” (Is that what he thought? How wrong can one be?) He hunkered further down in the bedclothes, lacing his hands behind his head. “As for you, Liza, my bank draft, carried somewhere securely, will buy you the right, at any time, to quit the country and return home, should anything go amiss. You’ll be safe.”
And with those words, a summer jaunt to impertinent Spain—at someone else’s expense—suddenly seemed like the most glorious of adventures. The divorce could leak its way through the courts like cod liver oil through one’s system, nasty going down but quietly effective: one husband, purged. Neither Thomas nor I would likely be allowed to marry again—as if I would. That didn’t worry me in the least. No, I would learn Spanish dances, and then come back lithe as a panther, ready to take London by storm.
A sobering thought hit me. “But what if I—? Should I decide to stay the course—?”
“You may keep the money, in that case, and spend it on something beautiful. Yourself.”
Bliss! I thanked the earl in the ways he liked best, and he even spent the night, he was that exhausted.
The next few days were a flurry of activity as I met with Señor Hernandez, obtained information for my travelling plans, and managed to convince Howard Harris to equip me with a few (crucial) new garments (two large trunks and several hat boxes full). There were day dresses and a gown for the evening, in the latest colours and fabrics: one demure dove grey, one a vibrant summer sky blue, one I wasn’t too keen about but that the earl liked in a soft pink with lots of frills and furbelows (which he certainly helped me rumple, the first time I tried it on for him). And my favourite of all, in a gaily patterned tartan above with stripes below, cunningly cut to emphasize my shape. Well, I needed to make a good impression when I met the mysterious “superior” in Paris. According to Hernandez, this man was named Juan de Grimaldi, an influential person who had the ears of Spanish royalty as well as the French. He was also a former theatrical impresario. The stars were aligning, I whispered to myself. I was moving on, seeing the world again, on my own and with full independence!
And though travel requires an enormous duration of time that many people consider to be lost from one’s real, striving life, I knew that, in the space between what is expected of you when leaving at one end and before arriving at the other, there can be enormous change, both within and without. You can emerge an almost completely different person.
Two previous voyages have taught me that, most distinctly. On the way back to my beloved India after marrying Thomas, I was no longer an innocent young girl, grateful to be married at any price to escape the fate my mother had decreed. Aboard the ship, Thomas had grown moody, and then one night he’d struck me. Not hard, but it had shocked us both, and I’d realized things could get ugly. Problems in the bedroom had quickly become chronic, the main one being that he had a very tight foreskin, and whenever he put it up me, it hurt him. The injustice of blaming me for this inconvenience never seemed to occur to him. We spent so much time coaxing his small, inflamed member that I began to lose all interest in the business. I came to understand that runaway matches, like runaway horses, are almost sure to end in a smash-up.
However! My next travel adventure was quite heavenly. That time, my stepfather and now-estranged husband were saving their honours and mine. Looking over the side as Thomas finally descended the gangway and I saw the top of his head for the last time, I’d felt my heart rise and the air grow light around me.
That’s when I discovered that time out of time can be glorious. I was free again, I could breathe; a whole voyage stretched ahead between me and my return to the Scottish relatives. The winds were hot, and I loosened my stays, shedding at least two layers of undergarments. As we drew in to Madras, I was idly observing those coming aboard when my pulse quickened at the sight of a long-legged young man with wavy blond hair. That evening at dinner, I learned that his name was George Lennox (bounder!). He was both the aide-de-camp of Lord Elphinstone and the nephew of the Duke of Richmond, and I’ve always been a fool for a title. Things had quickly gotten out of hand as far as my shipboard reputation was concerned, but I was in the throes of newly discovered passion and couldn’t have cared a fig.
George would sometimes come to my cabin, and I would sometimes go to his. The place didn’t matter, it was what began to happen inside that did. I discovered magical sensations vastly superior to those I’d been able to conjure myself during lonely spells. I howled like a banshee the first time I experienced the great sublimation, until George, laughing, put his hand over my mouth and hushed me. George’s body was beautifully smooth and his sandy beard very thick, so that even by noon his cheeks had a reddish shadow. And his member, well! I’d never before known one that had been cut, and soon it seemed to me an eminently superior ritual. He would hold himself unabashedly and fondly, looking down along his body, and when I asked, he told me that his family had always done it. I asked if it had hurt, but he said he had no idea, it was done when he was a baby and he was sure he wasn’t the worse for it, “so come here, cherub.” It never caused him any discomfort, compared with poor, sore Thomas who moaned and writhed in pain even as he sought pleasure. George allowed me to know a man, truly, for the first time; to know what was pleasing to him and to discover what pleased me when I was with him. He told me I was beautiful beyond belief in the most secretive folds and byways, as he made me warble like a nightingale—and sometimes like a raven. Oh, cad, I’d loved you obscenely!
Blast and damn. How did that blackguard get back into my head? Because, I suppose, at the start of this whole thing—poised for Paris, the earl’s bank draft secreted in the hem of my favourite new striped-tartan gown in case of emergencies—I found myself eager to travel again and easily talked into it. I’d asked very few questions! When I think of that now . . . Was I really so trusting? Or gullible, perhaps? The earl did seem awfully keen for me to travel. Well, I could sense my liaison with him was coming to an end. He had rather neglected his duties at the house, and his wife, he reported, had also complained about the size of the bills that he seemed to be running up, now that he was living in London during the week. Fine, I’d thought, no regrets. He’d cheered me up, set me going again, and that was a wonderful gift in itself. The bitterness of George’s betrayal was behind me, my appetite for men had returned, and life and love beckoned once more. So yes, at that heady juncture, I suppose I decided to congratulate myself on my adventurous spirit and my undeniable talent for leaping off cliffs without a boring backwards glance. Nothing, I thought, could hurt me, because this time, I would betray before being betrayed.
Perfect for what they had in mind, had I but known it.