On the morning of his twenty-first birthday, in the breakfast room of the Villa in Central New York, Conor, although nervous, announced his plan.
“Mother, I am bringing a woman home,” he said (and no one in attendance—servants, courtiers, journalists and assorted hangers-on—knew how nerve-wracking a moment this was for him). “Have the rooms made ready.”
I can imagine him saying this. He told me ruefully about it much later, his earlier, lordly, anxious self far behind him. “I was a right prat, Soph,” he said. “I was always given to making pronouncements, Goddess help me.”
This wasn’t entirely his fault. His speeches were doubtless always greeted with awe, manufactured and otherwise.
“Oh, bravo, bravo!” There was applause from the audience. It was probably muted from the servants, since there was obviously going to be more work—even if the woman to be brought there wasn’t an official wife, she still would have her demands, they were sure of that. Much more enthusiastic would have been the reaction from the journalists and the hangers-on. Because of recent disasters in Megalopolis, the newspapers had been crying out for more distracting stories. Since Conor was already engaged to be married to one of the Great Tabloid Beauties of Megalopolis, Rowena Pomfret, an heiress herself, there was going to be the triangle story to work. “Any kind of story like that was meat to them,” my father remembered. “I don’t know what I was thinking, if I thought at all, about how Rowena would feel about this, or what it was going to mean to my future career. I think that must have meant I was already in love with your mother, Soph. Before then, I don’t think I ever forgot about my career, not for a second.” He sighed and smiled (and in his old age, he had a particularly sweet and engaging smile). “Of course, after… well, it came, and it went. Until it was too late.”
As for the hangers-on, they immediately plotted to lure the concubine-to-be to their side. There was constant political war for the scraps from the tables of the rich in Megalopolis, and the war in the Villa in Central New York was no exception.
Everyone approved, it seemed, of this unusual step Conor was taking. Including, to his considerable surprise, his mother. Livia. My grandmother.
“Bring her back, Conor,” Livia advised, her voice thoughtful. “And we’ll see what we shall see.”
Conor froze. He had been packing—it was a habit of his to pack for himself, as he was fastidious in his dress and never trusted a servant to get the creases just so. He had just smoothed down his two favorite shirts when Livia entered the room unannounced. She looked at him. He shuddered, but went on packing. “In a way,” my father told me to my own surprise much later, “in a way, we understood each other very well, Livia and I.” I know that he had always hated her. She told me so herself, much later, and she appeared to relish, rather than regret, the terror she inspired in her son.
“He did understand me, though,” she said, her eyes lighting maliciously at the memory. “A clever boy. Too malleable. But quick to know what you meant.”
He understood what she meant now. Even though the marriage with Rowena Pomfret was desirable, even though she had negotiated the contract herself—Conor’s father being hopeless at any business matters (he was, as Livia remarked to me much later, “mainly for the Look”)—even though so much seemed to pivot on this alliance, and even though Conor had felt a surge of independence and rebellion at his decision to ride into the mountains in search of my mother—despite all these things, Livia wanted Conor to follow his new course of action.
Without waiting for her son’s answer, Livia now turned to go out. But before he had a chance to heave a sigh of relief, she turned back once more.
“Oh, and Conor,” she said.
“Yes, Mother?” he answered, and he turned, looking nervously in her turquoise-blue eyes.
“Make sure you bring the dog. That will be good for the newspapers. Everybody loves a dog. I can’t think why.”
And then she went out.
Conor’s knees buckled. But he didn’t allow himself to falter, not then, anyway. He had made his plan and now he would carry it through.