Love and Scandal, page 23
So she waited while Marian, just outside the parlor door, spoke in low tones to her…to George Lewes. The door opened again and Marian came in, her arm linked with a man who wore a neat, but not rakish jacket, and who carried his hat under his free arm. He sneezed and fastidiously wiped his nose on a large, square, white handkerchief with G. L. embroidered in the corner.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I am just recovering from a cold, as is Marian. You must excuse me.”
Collette gazed at his face with shock. Plain would have been a charitable description of George Lewes. Somehow she had envisioned the man who could tempt a woman to such a lifestyle as this to be devastatingly handsome, suave, with a piercing gaze and the signs of dissipation on his face. Instead she was faced with a very ordinary man, weak-chinned and with a thick, luxuriant mustache, slightly balding, and of no more than average height.
But Marian gazed at him with unconcealed joy and pride, and a doting expression. “George, this is Collette Jardiniere. Collette, this is George Lewes.”
An hour later, over tea taken at a round table in the corner of the dark-paneled sitting room, they were chatting and laughing like old friends. Collette gazed at George’s eyes and smiled. He was looking at Marian as she spoke about something, and there was such a look of fondness on his plain face that it was a pleasure to gaze at him. From incredulity that a woman would give up so much for a man like George Lewes, Collette had drifted to a more humble understanding of the attraction.
He loved her.
It was so apparent in every word and every gesture, every touch of his hand and every expression in his eyes. She was light and air and food to him, the very necessities of life. He and Marian had clearly decided to live the one life they were given with comfort. They needed each other, and the support they could share.
But there was more than just love between them. At first, Collette had not been able to imagine what it was. As they talked though, of their work and writing, she began to figure out what it was that touched her so deeply. George Lewes not only loved Marian, but he believed in her and respected her. He believed she could do anything she set her mind to, and only wanted to help in whatever way he could. Even if that meant staying away at crucial moments, such as when she was deep in one of the articles she wrote for The Leader or The Westminster Review, or editing a particularly taxing book.
That a man should be so supportive of a woman—a woman writer at that—had never occurred to Collette. It was one of the reasons she had vigorously rejected marriage in the past. Looking ahead at her life with one suitor she had briefly considered, a barrister in Listerwood, she had seen that he would expect her to give up her scribbling. How could she give up what was meat and drink to her?
Collette understood that when Marian fell in love with a man so decent and giving, she ultimately could not let his loveless marriage keep them apart. The inability to celebrate their love before the world and the forced cutting of many ties—for most of their old friends were loath to visit them now—was a heartbreak to Marian. But she and George consoled each other as best they could, Collette thought, as they sat down to dinner and talked of books and writing.
She envisioned their life together, the quiet dinners, the evenings and days spent in mutual work, reading to one another, exchanging ideas. They had only been living together in lodgings for a few months—before that they had been traveling—but already they had the air of an old married couple.
The time had come, she thought, with a kind of wonder, to tell someone. She had told no one but the Professor and her aunt…and Jameson…that she wrote, but instinctively she felt that these people would understand her dilemma. As Marian passed her a basket of rolls across the white tablecloth, Collette said, “I have not been completely honest with you both, and I feel the need to…to confess.”
Marian, basket in hand, paused and glanced across the table at George. Among the three of them they had thoroughly canvassed the problem of the scurrilous gossip in Wilson’s Gazette, but had as yet come to no definitive conclusion but that Collette should not go back to Listerwood, and that she should stay at Marian and George’s at least that night. Marian had expressed concern for Collette and her reputation, but Collette had laughed at the notion her reputation could suffer any more than it already had since she was named as mistress to the most notorious womanizer in London. Since neither of them read the Wilson’s Gazette columns, they did not know about the furor surrounding Charles Jameson’s supposed authorship of Collette’s book, nor had she so far introduced that complication.
“What have you not told us?” George asked, taking the basket from Marian and setting it down.
Collette sighed and fidgeted, swallowed and shifted in her chair. “I will understand if after hearing me out you wish to toss me from your home for not having been wholly honest. I…I can only plead that recently my trust has been abused. I have been let down rather badly by the one person to whom I told the truth, and I let it affect my behavior.”
“Tell us,” Marian said gently, putting her hand over George’s where his lay on the table.
He turned his over and squeezed Marian’s hand, saying, “You will receive a sympathetic hearing in this house.”
And so she told them, not omitting anything, right up to her present predicament. They had removed to the sitting room halfway through the story, and Collette, silent at last, watched her newfound friends’ faces.
Marian glanced at George, and then back at Collette. “My dear,” she said, leaning forward and taking Collette’s small hands in her slightly larger ones. “First, may I congratulate you? I have read The Last Days of a Rake, and overall I was very impressed, though if I had been your editor I would have suggested some changes in your characterization of Susan. That, and a few shifts in your language that did not strike me as quite authentic, and Lankin’s reformation seemed a little abrupt, a little forced. I would have advised…” She caught George’s steady gaze and stopped. “But I thought it a very good novel.”
George nodded, his brows beetling and his breath puffing through his thick mustache. He scruffed his sidewhiskers with one hand. “Yes, rather a good first attempt, though I must say I was surprised by the hubbub about it. People seemed to think it was a kind of validation of the rake’s lifestyle when it was clearly not meant as that.”
“Exactly! I was disappointed in people’s reactions concerning that, too,” Collette cried. “And what you said, Marian—and George, too—about the novel… Your critique is so true.” Their honest criticism was a relief to her. Here were two people who understood her desire to better herself and her writing.
Marian frowned. “I think perhaps the problem lay in your turning of his life toward the end. Perhaps you made him become rather too noble? I’m afraid people prefer someone wicked to someone too good.”
“Do you think so?” Collette asked.
“I don’t see that as a problem,” George said, tapping the tabletop with one ink-stained finger. “I wondered, though, if what you were really saying was that this man should have stayed a rake if that was what he was meant for. Perhaps that is why the change seemed so forced.”
“Yes, yes, exactly!” Collette shouted, jumping in her seat and clapping her hands. “No one has gotten that part of it! No one has seen that I meant to suggest that perhaps his reformation was not the end he was meant for, and that his behavior did not have to become so lily-white, that morality could have been achieved in a different manner. I’m afraid that I have not expressed it clearly enough. You are the first…” She paused, thinking of Jameson and a similar observation on his part, and felt her cheeks pinken. “Or…or perhaps the second person who saw that.”
She felt a shiver down her back. This was what she had been missing her whole life! Rational people able to discuss writing and literature and novels with insight and lack of prejudice. At home her aunt didn’t really understand her writing, and the Professor commented, but seemed to miss the point of almost every scene! Had she barred herself from this kind of discourse when she had refused to come to London? Or had everything she had done brought her to this point for a reason?
“Now that we know the whole truth, we can plan your attack on London,” Marian said with relish. “First, I believe George knows someone at Wilson’s Gazette, so perhaps we can find out how these bits are getting into the paper.”
George nodded thoughtfully. “Do not worry, Miss Jardiniere. I think we can find a way out of this situation for you.”
For the first time since she had come to London, Collette did not feel alone. She sighed and sat back in her chair and said, “Thank you, my friends. Please, please call me Collette.”
Nineteen
Jameson, purposely wearing his haughtiest expression, knowing he used it to intimidate, gazed down at Mr. Bellringer. “Sir, I know Colin Jenkins is a fictional name, and that it is Miss Collette Jardiniere who is the real writer of The Last Days of a Rake. Why do you not just admit it? She has told me herself, you know, because of that absurd misunderstanding with Wilson’s Gazette.”
Bellringer cast a worried glance over at his bespectacled assistant, David Stuyvesent, and tapped his long fingers on his scarred desktop. The other man, younger than Bellringer but even paler and more slender, shrugged and raised his eyebrows. They were communicating silently, Jameson thought, and he narrowed his eyes, watching the interchange.
There was no doubt left in his own mind, now that he had seen their reaction to direct confrontation with the truth. If Collette was not the author they would have said so, he was sure of that. Not that he had any doubt left. All the way back to London on the train, he had contemplated this, and the journey of self-discovery had been enlightening and humbling. Collette Jardiniere, village spinster and untraveled, uneducated lady, was the author of The Last Days of a Rake. She was possibly his intellectual equal, most certainly his emotional superior, and precious to him in ways he had not begun to understand. He had misused her terribly and owed her an abject apology. But first he would wrest the confession from Bellringer even if he had to squeeze his windpipe to do it. He leaned over the desk and glared into the man’s almost colorless eyes.
“Bellringer, she is the author. Say it! I will not leave here until you do.”
The answer came: “She is the writer.”
But it was not Bellringer who spoke after all, but Stuyvesent. Jameson turned and looked at the slender young man.
“We were protecting her,” Bellringer said, speaking up finally.
“At her request,” Stuyvesent added.
Jameson nodded. “I understand that, but this has gone on long enough. And now some despicable rumormonger has put it about that she is my mistress.”
Bellringer shot a worried look at Stuyvesent. The younger man cleared his throat and took off his glasses, cleaning them on an enormous handkerchief he whipped out of his pocket.
“Why do I get the feeling you both know something about this?” Jameson asked, glancing from Bellringer to his assistant and back again.
Bellringer sat up straighter. “I swear I had nothing to do with any gossip campaign and know nothing about it. On my honor, sir.”
“All right,” Jameson said slowly. “Can you say the same, Mr. Stuyvesent?”
“Why would either of us want to hurt Miss Jardiniere?” he said, pushing his spectacles back onto his nose. “It would not be in our best interest, surely?”
Jameson noted that it was not an answer.
“Is she not, then, your mistress?” Stuyvesent asked. “I think there must be some truth behind the, uh, rumor.”
His tone was sly, though his question was direct. What did they know? Surely the man would not have said such a thing just based on the gossip column. Keeping a tight rein on his fury, Jameson said, “I shall beat to a pulp any man who says such a thing in my presence. Now, would you like to repeat that, Mr. Stuyvesent?”
With ill-concealed dislike in his expression, Stuyvesent grudgingly said, “No, sir, I would not.”
“I didn’t think so. See that you never say that again, or I will learn of it, and then I will hunt you down as I would a mad dog.”
He left the publisher’s office in a thoughtful mood. He should have done this long ago, when Collette first came to town and confessed her authorship of Last Days to him. It would have saved him a world of trouble and a long journey to Blackpool if he had just confronted that chap Bellringer with his knowledge and wrung the truth from him. And if he had been man enough to take action immediately, he could have saved poor Collette a world of pain and this awful predicament. No matter what they did now, there would always be some who, like Stuyvesent, assumed there must be some truth behind the rumor.
Why had he truly denied for so long the possibility that she was the author? He was a pompous ass, he decided. A thick-headed pompous ass. Fortunately, the Chapter Coffeehouse was just down the street, and Jameson could, without giving himself time to think about it, admit to Collette that he would do everything in his power to disavow authorship of the book, even if she was not ready to admit to the world that she was Colin Jenkins. And there was one way he could reverse the tide of nasty gossip concerning Collette.
He could marry her.
He needed to grovel for forgiveness and hope she was kinder to him than he deserved. If Collette accepted his offer of marriage, at least he would have for a wife a passionate woman. It would be some recompense for having to marry at all.
He strode into the Chapter Coffeehouse. But fifteen minutes later he was back on the walk outside, twisting his hat in his hands in baffled fury. No one inside would admit to knowing where she had gone. It appeared she had vanished three days before with no forwarding address to send on her mail. There had been messages received for her, but with no forwarding address they had gone unclaimed.
Had she left London? Philoxia Bertrand was sure to know where Collette had disappeared to, or perhaps the authoress was staying with her. He strode off, determined to mend the mistakes he had made and undo the damage.
But Philoxia Bertrand, elegant in a gray-blue silk walking outfit, responded with horror when he told her that Collette had left the Chapter Coffeehouse.
“What do you mean she has left the Chapter Coffeehouse?” Philoxia’s face drained of color. “She must be there! I sent messages for her and never heard back, but I thought she was busy… I…I assumed…”
“She is not,” he said. “She left. I was hoping she would be here, but as you have no notion where she is either, I must suppose she has gone back to that little hole-in-the-wall village she comes from. Though I’m surprised she didn’t tell you before she left. Are you sure you have received no—”
“Message for you, ma’am,” a footman said as he came into the morning parlor.
Philoxia took it and ripped open the single sheet of paper, moving over to the window where the light filtered in through lace curtains. Her eyes widened. “Of all the… Why on earth would she go there?”
Jameson, brushing a mote of dust from his hat, glanced up, his gaze sharp and inquiring. “Is that from Collette?” Seeing the woman’s shocked stare, he corrected himself as he moved toward her, hand outstretched. “From Miss Jardiniere?”
Eyes narrowed, she said, “Why do I think this has more to do with you than anyone is saying?” She handed him the paper and folded her arms across her bosom.
Jameson read the paper and felt his blood chill in his veins. “She is at Evans and Lewes’s place? What in God’s name is she doing there? Of all the… This will ruin her reputation!”
“Perhaps,” Philoxia said acidly, snatching back the paper, “she feels she has no reputation left to ruin, thanks to you!”
He groaned and covered his eyes. “I wish to make it right for her! But this…” He uncovered his eyes and stared at the floor, abstracted. “Now she has done that which will put her beyond the pale. She must be out of her mind to go to stay with Evans and Lewes! They are pariahs even in the literary world! She must leave there at once, before the stain of their sins taints her. Wilson’s Gazette did not, at least, name her. Perhaps we can yet reverse all of this nonsense. No one will guess…”
“But they have as good as named her!” Philoxia said, glaring at Jameson, her eyes flashing with anger. “They gave out her initials and where she was staying. It would not be long before people pointed fingers. Why are you plaguing her anyway? I would not think her your type.”
Jameson paused and reflected, turning his hat around and around in his hands. Philoxia was evidently not completely in Collette’s confidence concerning her authorship of Last Days, nor the finer points of their relationship. “It has been wholly by chance, and may I say, not unmixed with pleasure on both of our parts,” he said carefully. “I regret any pain she has suffered from being connected to me in print, and I will do whatever I can to rectify the situation. But I still don’t understand why she chose to go to Marian Evans and George Lewes. Miss Evans is not accepted in polite society.”
“And yet you are accepted everywhere, and Lewes almost so.” Philoxia’s patrician face was contorted in rage. Her voice low and bitter, she glared at Jameson as if by being male he was somehow responsible. “Where is the justice in that? Why do men escape censure, while the women they bed do not?”
Her mellow voice had risen in hysteria. He watched her closely, wondering what was behind her sudden ire. Was there more to it than mere worry about her friend? But then he shook his head. “That is neither my doing nor my worry at present. Mrs. Bertrand, please believe me, I would save her from herself before she ruins her life.”
“Do not approach her yet,” Philoxia commanded, clenching her fists. “I will go see her and find out what is going on.”
Jameson bowed. “I will stay in contact with you, then, Mrs. Bertrand,” he said, not revealing that he intended to do more than just wait. He clapped his hat on his head as he exited Philoxia’s elegant townhouse. He would keep his own counsel and do what he saw fit. This was, at least in part, his own mess, and he would take care of it.
