Love and Scandal, page 7
Collette flinched. She wanted to suggest they leave, as she began to feel she had made a dreadful mistake in coming. These people were all so…so sophisticated and rich and…well, different from her. Her dress was dowdy, and she had not a single jewel save her mother’s plain pearl earrings and a sapphire pendant. These women were exquisitely gowned in dresses that swung out from their nipped waists.
Collette merely wore a couple of layers of petticoats, whereas these gorgeous creatures wore skirts with yards and yards of expensive gold and green and blue fabric, jewel tones, trimmed with ells of lace, all draped over a cage crinoline. They looked like lovely bells, their gowns swaying as they walked. Collette stared in fascination. They had nothing like this in Listerwood-on-Sea.
Henny, though, was oblivious. She waved to a slender, beautifully attired woman on the other side of the room, and that lady broke away from the little group she had been standing with to sweep across the room, her full skirt billowing out. Collette stared at Philoxia, thinking she would never have picked the elegant, sophisticated lady walking toward them for her wild, passionate, impetuous friend.
“I never thought to see the day!” she said, hands outstretched as she approached. “Henrietta! Has Dancey let you away from your babies, then, and sent you out to see the great, wide, wicked world?”
Henrietta grasped her hands in her own and kissed her friend on the cheek, then stood back with a mischievous glint in her blue eyes. “Philoxia, I have come to bring you a surprise!”
Philoxia had smiled at Collette with polite greeting but no recognition in her eyes. Now she glanced down again—there was a considerable disparity in height between them—and a puzzled frown marred her lovely, aristocratic features. Her coal-black hair was swept back from her forehead and pomaded with fragrant oil, and she wore a deep burgundy gown of exquisite cut with a heavy chain of garnets and garnet drop earrings.
“Do I… Pardon me, but have we met?” she asked, peering nearsightedly at Collette.
Henny, for all her bulk, gave a schoolgirlish skip and giggled. “I knew you would not be wearing your glasses. Look carefully, my dearest. Your birthday is in two weeks—this young lady is your present!” Her eyes sparkled and she clasped her hands together, breathless while she waited for recognition.
“I don’t understand, dear.” She turned to Henny. “Whatever are you talking about?”
“Look closely, dear. Imagine that face with red strawberry around the mouth and an ink stain on the pointed chin!”
Philoxia peered carefully at Collette, then her narrow face took on a bewildered expression. She stared into Collette’s eyes. “Collette Jardiniere? Colly?” She grasped Collette’s shoulders and glared deeply into her eyes as if searching her soul for the truth. “Colly! Dear, sweet Colly, is that really you? Well, yes, of course it is! I should have seen it right away. You have changed hardly at all. But it has been almost…heavens, almost ten years since I left Miss Grant’s, and you were gone when I came back, and we hardly wrote. Oh my goodness, Colly!” Her voice had risen in tone through her speech until it was girlish and high, breaking with excitement and emotion.
Absurdly, Collette felt tears welling up and brimming in her eyes. Loxy, darling Loxy! How had she ever lost track of these two dears? One arm around Henny’s plump shoulders and one around Loxy’s, Collette drew her friends into a three-sided hug. For the first time in a long time, she felt complete. “Oh, Loxy, Henny, how I’ve missed you!” she exclaimed, tears blurring her vision behind her spectacles. “I never knew how much until this very second.”
The three young women, all of an age but with such different lives, chattered giddily as they moved over to a sofa, Collette in the center. Holding each others’ hands, they canvassed thoroughly their lives since school, chattering all at once sometimes about Collette’s quiet home in Listerwood-on-Sea and Philoxia’s various travels through Italy and France and even about Henny’s domestic woes.
But eventually Loxy glanced around the room, fishing her lorgnette out of a hidden pocket in her glamorous gown. “Oh, dear, what a dreadful hostess I am being tonight. I must see to my other guests, my darling dears, but I shall be back, and then, Collette, I shall introduce you around. If you are still interested in writing there are some very important people I would like you to meet.”
And so the meeting between herself and her old friend had occurred and yet still Collette felt that nervous quivering within her. She gazed around the room at the groups of people in energetic conversation. She knew Philoxia had played hostess to any number of literary luminaries, including Mr. Dickens himself, the king of London literary society. Perhaps she was just anticipating meeting such illustrious folk.
Loxy made her rounds, stopping here and there to talk, guiding people to the refreshment table, laden with pastries and presided over by an elderly dragon in black silk. She then came back to Collette and Henny and walked with them about the room, introducing them to people, gently steering them toward those who would look kindly upon them.
It was obvious to Collette that there were certain people who lurked in dark corners, people to whom Loxy did not introduce them, for whatever reason. There were men with a wild, unkempt look about them, and women whose dress was outré, to say the least. Collette wondered if Philoxia, knowing Henny’s husband’s control of her life, was being careful that she would have nothing to conceal after this night. It did not appear that those people did anything so very scandalous, but perhaps their conversation would shock.
“Ah, there is Mrs. Gaskell,” Philoxia said with an eager smile. “Let me introduce you to her. She is a very good friend.”
They approached a woman with a lovely oval face, mild eyes and a perfect cupid’s bow mouth. Loxy pulled Collette toward her and said, “Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, I would like to introduce you to my old and dear friend, Miss Collette Jardiniere. Colly, this is Mrs. Gaskell, the author of Mary Barton, you know.”
“You d-do not need to tell me.” Collette took the other woman’s outstretched hand in greeting. “The name is enough. Mrs. Gaskell, this is an honor. I read Mary Barton with much interest. Such passion and meaning and…and…so much social conscience. It inspired me. I am reading North and South right now and enjoying it immensely.”
The woman gazed at her with interest. “Philoxia, dear, I would like to speak with this clever young woman. May I?” Eyebrows raised, she glanced at Loxy, who nodded.
Before Collette knew it, Philoxia and Henny were left behind and she was being escorted on a tour of the room with the famous novelist. It is like a dream, she thought, floating along with the other woman, and yet I am one of them. I am one of these people, a writer, a novelist acclaimed as the new Thackeray. But I did not have the courage to put my own name on the novel, and so now I am reaping the bitter harvest of cowardice. Perhaps it is only in the small villages such as mine that being a novelist is shocking. Perhaps if I had seen the world a little, come to London, I would not have made the same decision. If only I could talk to this woman as one writer to another. If only I had not hid behind a man’s name. If only—
All the “perhapses” and “if onlys” bore down on her like a leaden weight. This was the life she had wished for when young. Never had she found anyone to whom she could talk about literature and writing and books. Dear friends as they were, Henny was bored by books and did not want to even think about them outside of school hours, and Philoxia in her youth was wild, her tastes running to artists and musicians and a Bohemian lifestyle she espoused and wished to emulate. Running away with a music master and then being deserted by him was the closest she had ever come, as far as Collette knew. Books had been Collette’s province and a private delight and solace.
They walked and talked of books and writing. Mrs. Gaskell insisted that Collette call her Elizabeth, as the conversation became more personal. The authoress told Collette that she and Philoxia were close friends. When Philoxia had lost the last of her babies, she, Elizabeth, was just a few years past the death of her own last child, a boy, at ten months old. It had been very painful, and so she had been of some comfort to Philoxia.
“And so,” the woman said, turning away from such a sad subject and brightening, “do you write yourself, Collette, or do you just read?” She guided them toward a seat by the fireplace. “Though I should never say ‘just’, for is not the reader most vital in the process? What does a writer write for if not for some audience, the all-important reader?”
“I do have some ambition in that direction,” Collette said, sitting carefully so as not to disturb the other woman’s fashionable gown.
Mrs. Gaskell nodded with approval. “Novels, my dear, are a woman’s natural outlet. We are created for observation of people by a lifetime of needing their cooperation to live our lives with any amount of freedom. My own William—my husband, you know—is the dearest of men, but even the best of men require managing.”
Her remark echoed closely the thoughts Collette had been having earlier. “Did your husband not object to you publishing under your own name?” she asked, curious about the dynamics in a family where the woman was famous, and for writing books that had stirred controversy, too, much as her own Last Days had.
A group of ladies and gentleman nearby was embroiled in a fierce argument on some obscure matter of social law. Collette’s eyes widened at the boldness with which the women expressed themselves. She had always thought herself alone in the way she thought and spoke, but here were other women with passionate opinions and beliefs. Perhaps there was a place, even in Victoria’s England, for women with minds of their own!
“Oh, no, my dear,” the authoress said. “He encouraged me to write. But then William is… Well, he understands passion.” She flushed faintly, glancing away, and did not elaborate. “And things are easier for a married woman, you know. My dear friend Charlotte Brontë…” Her voice broke and she stopped for a moment, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief produced, as if by magic, from the sleeve of her elegant gown.
Collette stayed respectfully silent, not knowing what to say in the face of an acquaintance’s grief. It had been a shock to the literary world that just as she was becoming known as the real person behind the name Currer Bell, Miss Brontë, or rather Mrs. Bell as she had become upon marriage to her father’s curate, had died just that last spring.
Mrs. Gaskell drew herself up. “I was saying that unmarried women in our time must be careful of their reputation, as was my friend.”
Collette nodded. It was some sop to her conscience, she thought, that this woman might understand her motives, but not enough.
“I do not know whether she would have continued to write after her marriage,” Elizabeth continued, with a frown on her lovely face. “She would have had a family to look after,” she said, obliquely referring to the writer’s delicate condition, “and that must always take precedence. But I am determined that she will be immortalized for the work she did and for the wonderful, courageous woman she was. I am writing a life history of Charlotte, which explains my presence in London. I am gathering material, letters she wrote, keepsakes people treasure. Once I have what I need, I pray I will be able to retire back home to begin the writing.”
“I can sympathize with that. I believe the retirement of the village or countryside more suited for writing, and the more taxing the material, the more retired the writer’s circumstances should be,” Collette said. “You have undertaken a difficult job and should have some measure of seclusion.”
Elizabeth Gaskell glanced at her with piercing interest in her fine eyes. “You might not think my circumstances favorable for writing if you had seen the suffering I have observed around Manchester. My situation may be retired compared to London, but life is still full of duties that pull me this way and that. But on the whole I agree with you, my dear. I think that is especially true of women writers.
“The gentlemen seem to thrive on the hustle and bustle of the city, the aura of competitiveness. Mr. Dickens, Mr. Thackeray and the rest seem to need that to produce their best work. But women writers prefer the country. Perhaps it is just that we have so many more calls upon our time. You must wed a gentleman who values your mind as well as your other various parts. Not all husbands are as sympathetic as my dear William.”
Collette thought that perhaps Mrs. Gaskell was right. “If a woman writer is to marry,” she offered, “she had best be sure her husband is the right kind of man, in other words, and is wealthy enough for decent household help.”
Mrs. Gaskell chuckled. “Perhaps you have hit on something. We women are so dependent on others to make our lives smooth, whereas the gentlemen seem able to produce even when their home lives are in turmoil, as are some I could name. Ah…” Her lovely face lit up with enthusiasm. “Now, my dear,” she said, leaning into Collette and murmuring beneath the hubbub of conversation that swirled around them. “Now you will get to meet a truly interesting man. Though I don’t know how suitable he is for the company of a young unmarried woman, as he has the reputation of being a rake. But there is nothing so attractive to a woman as a rake, do you not agree? Collette, do you not agree?”
Collette could not speak. It was as if all breath had been sucked from her lungs while her heart pounded wildly. She stood absolutely still, gazing toward the door.
Jamie was here.
Six
She had not thought to ever see him again, and there he was, devastating in black evening clothes: broad-shouldered, taper-waisted, dark hair gleaming by candlelight. Jamie. A swarm of buzzing bees sounded in her ears and butterflies fluttered in her stomach, a veritable entomological frenzy of activity.
Jamie. Or whatever his name was. He was bending over a lady listening to her chatter as she flirted up at him, eyes wide and hands waving, touching his shoulder, then her own cheek, moving so her lovely skirt swayed. He took her hand and caressed it before raising it to his lips and kissing it slowly and gently.
Riveted, Collette watched, experiencing every sensation as though it were her hand; she remembered the feel of his lips, gentle on hers, and the tickle of his mustache.
Never had she believed that a woman could bear the mark of a man on her soul, but the fiery, searing touch of him had left its imprint, and she would never be the same. How could she ever leave him? And yet she must. To do otherwise would be to be devoured whole, a female Jonah within the leviathan gullet of his overwhelming presence. But then he swept over her like a channel wave and she was gone, gone, gone—
Why did that blasted inner voice only seem to work when she thought about him or saw him? And why could she not shape these internal maunderings into something—anything—that had literary merit? Perhaps it was because, as she had admitted to herself in the darkness of her attic room the previous night, she was experiencing and feeling new things. To fashion these new sensations into a plot would take time and contemplation, neither of which she had in abundance at the moment. Perhaps it would not be until she was back in Kent.
She gradually realized Elizabeth was guiding her in Jamie’s direction, and Philoxia was bearing down on him too, from across the room. They reached him together. He straightened, turned, and his eyes met Collette’s. For one instant all the sophisticated air of boredom was erased from his handsome face. His slate eyes widened, his thick brows raised on his forehead and his mouth, with its neat mustache lining it, curved in an expression of joy. He looked youthful and happy, as if someone had just given him an unexpected gift. Collette could not imagine what he was thinking. She only knew she was thrilled and afraid and hazardously close to euphoria.
“Jameson, how good to see you.” Philoxia took Collette’s other arm, and as Mrs. Gaskell looked on with some amusement, having perhaps noted the stunned expression on Collette’s face, their hostess said, “Miss Collette Jardiniere, may I introduce you to Mr. Charles Stonehampton Jameson?”
Jameson. Charles Jameson. In one moment, the time it took for the introduction, Collette’s world had convulsed, pitching her into a wilderness of confusion and disbelief.
He had betrayed her, had taken the most tender moments of her life and made them into dross. He was not who he said he was, or at least he was not who she had thought he was. He was her sworn enemy, a dastard, a fraud.
“M-Mr. Jameson? Charles Jameson?” Collette said, hearing her own voice’s inane inflection and quavering tremor.
“I am,” he said, his voice deep, his eyes expressive. “Miss Collette Jardiniere. What a lovely, lovely name, for a lovely lady. I feel almost as if we have met before.”
Collette felt a swell of fury tamp down the misery she had begun to experience. Villain! Cold-hearted devil! He would toy with her this way? Had he known who she was even as they spoke on the train?
She was bewildered and flustered. He couldn’t have known, could he? No one knew she was Colin Jenkins except her publishers, and even they had not known what she looked like. Her publishers. Was this set up somehow, Jameson’s misidentification as the author of Last Days? Had they all along known about the article in Wilson’s Gazette, planted it there, perhaps?
She needed to get away, needed to think. Nothing made sense.
Philoxia, eyes bright, glanced down at her and then at Jameson. “This rascal,” she said, waving her elegant hand toward him even as she glanced back and forth between her friend and the gentleman, “is reported to be an author. It is whispered that he is author of that scandalous, entertaining and thoroughly wonderful book, The Last Days of a Rake. But he will neither confirm nor deny it.”
Mrs. Gaskell spoke up. “Ah, the press! They do dog one’s trail so. If you are the author, I do not blame you for leading them a merry dance, Jameson. This young lady,” she said, her arm over Collette’s shoulders, “is interested in books. She may even write one someday. Collette, you should talk to this rogue. He poses as a mere do-nothing, a man about town, but at the very least he is a collector of rare manuscripts and an admirer of fine prose. And perhaps a very fine writer?”
