And Only to Deceive

17

Now that the sun had set, the room seemed to have grown gloomy, although perhaps the chamber itself was less to fault for my perceptions than was my own humor. Ivy and Margaret, facing the other way, had not noticed my distress, and I didn't have any desire to draw their attention to it. I could no longer avoid the thought that Philip had almost certainly done something illegal; confirmation would come as soon as I could have someone analyze the vase. I remembered Mr. Murray telling me how difficult it had been for Philip to give it up to the museum. I hoped that Philip had commissioned an excellent copy for himself but feared that I would learn only too soon that he had kept the authentic one.

I searched my mind for any memory of my husband that could remotely relate to the matter at hand and returned in thought to a day in Amsterdam. It was the second week of our wedding trip; having finished Lady Audley's Secret, I searched to no avail for an English bookstore from which I could purchase another novel. Finally I happened upon a bookstall that had a ragged secondhand copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I promptly bought. Philip, engaged in business of some kind, had not accompanied me. Back at the hotel, I showed him my purchase and settled in for a nice read. The next morning at breakfast, he presented me with a beautifully wrapped parcel containing a first edition of the book.

"It is always preferable to have the genuine article, Lady Ashton," he had said with a smile.

The sound of Ivy's voice brought me back to the present.

"What shall I call this, Emily?" she asked. "Perhaps 'Bronze Statue of Man Forgetting Pants'?" She giggled.

"Really, Ivy! I'm shocked," I said, laughing with her. "He's doing the best he can with his cape. He has a rather fine figure, doesn't he? Curly hair like the great Alexander." I looked more closely and moaned. "I've seen this before; it's in the British Museum."

"Are you certain?" Margaret asked.

"Fairly certain. And that vase," I said, pointing toward the Judgment of Paris. "I know without a doubt that Philip donated the original to the museum."

"I don't know that we have any reason to doubt him, Emily," Ivy said, lowering herself onto a settee. "Of course, the presence of Apollo in your house is troubling, but it does not mean that all of these pieces have been illegally obtained. Maybe he did buy copies."

"Or maybe he stole the originals."

Ivy glared at Margaret as she spoke.

"The more I consider the possibility, the more likely I find it," I said, ringing the bell for Emory. "Nonetheless, I will attempt to withhold complete desperation until we can have someone look at these pieces or their counterparts in the museum. I am afraid, however, that when we look, we shall find the twins of each of them there."

"How will you determine which are the originals? Will you take all this back to London?"

"No, I think they should remain here. I'll have Emory box them up and keep them safely out of sight." I looked at Ivy and raised an eyebrow. "Would you like some port?"

"Absolutely," Margaret replied instead. "The situation clearly calls for port."

"Emily! You wouldn't dare! Not after your unfortunate dinner party!"

"No one is here to report our behavior, Ivy." Emory, who responded to my call, showed no sign of shock at my request. Good training enabled him to give the appearance of a man who thought nothing of a young lady's requesting his master's finest vintage port, although when he returned with it, I thought I detected a slight sheen on his brow, as if he were sweating on this cool evening. I watched as Ivy sipped from her glass and exclaimed with delight.

"Why do they force sherry on us instead of this?" she demanded. "It's dreadfully unfair."

"My sentiments exactly, which is why I intend to remove all sherry from my cellar and replace it with whatever port Berry Bros. & Rudd recommends to me. Cécile drinks nothing but champagne. Perhaps port should be my signature."

"Champagne is far less shocking, and I myself have seen Cécile drink wine, tea, and, for that matter, sherry," Ivy retorted.

"Perhaps we should ceremoniously dump out all the sherry from your cellar," Margaret suggested.

"This is dreadful of you, Emily. Robert will never let me drink the stuff. I'd rather that I never knew how much I liked it."

"We shall have to work on social reform slowly, my dear, one husband at a time," I said, smiling.

"Well, don't start with Robert. He'd think me a disgrace."

"I suppose that is what he considers me?" I asked.

"No, like everyone else, he thinks you are lost without Philip."

"I take offense at that, Ivy," Margaret said. "I do not think Emily is in the least lost without her husband."

"I didn't mean us, Margaret," Ivy replied, trying to sound polite. "But the topic brings to mind a conversation I had with Robert this morning, before we left. He saw Andrew at his club yesterday and tells me that the man could speak of nothing but you."

"I find that hard to believe," I said, sipping my port.

"I'm not particularly fond of the image of him sitting around at some men's club talking about you," Margaret said, pulling a book down from its shelf.

"I think he's quite in love with you, Emily. Robert thinks his intentions are serious."

"What makes him say that?"

"Well, he didn't tell me precisely, but it was the overall impression he gave."

"Andrew Palmer is irreverent, funny, knows more gossip than my mother, and as far as I can tell is serious about absolutely nothing. He is loads of fun, and I adore spending time with him, but I could never love him."

"Yet you kissed him," Ivy said.

"Yes, I did, and I'm glad of it. That doesn't mean I'm going to marry him."

"Well, I shouldn't like to be the one to dash his hopes of happiness," Ivy said, settling in with her port and smiling. "Aren't we supposed to smoke cigars with this?"

"Margaret would say yes, but I can't stand the smell of the things, can you?"

"Not really," she said. "Although it does remind me a bit of Robert."

"Are you very happy with him, Ivy?" I asked.

"Married life agrees with me." Her mischievous grin gave way to a demure smile.

"I can see you transformed to matron before my eyes! It's terrifying."

"Robert is very kind to me, and, unlike you, I have no desire to control money and property or any of that sort of thing. I enjoy having him take care of me."

"You are lucky to have found a husband who can be trusted to do that," Margaret said, looking up from the book she was reading.

"It's nice being on a pedestal," Ivy replied. I wondered if she would grow tired of such a relationship, as surely Robert would over time. "Should I swirl this in the glass? It makes me look rather sophisticated, don't you think?"

"You look stunning, as always, but I haven't the slightest idea if it's the thing to do with port. I shall ask Davis when we return to London."

"I think there are few things more comfortable than a good marriage, and I am thankful to have found that with Robert."

"Comfort is certainly important," Margaret agreed, though I could tell from her voice that it would not induce her to settle into such an arrangement.

"Do you love him, Ivy?" I asked. "I mean, really love him? Desperately, passionately? Does he fill your every thought? When you retire to bed at night, do you long for the moment he reaches for you?"

"Well, not exactly. Really, Emily, I think one has to have realistic expectations. I have read all the sordid novels you have, and I remain unconvinced that anyone ever achieves that sort of thing in real life."

"I'm not sure."

"I know you didn't think like this when Philip was alive, but do you feel that way about him now?"

"No, not really. Of course, he is dead, so it's rather frustrating to feel anything for him." I remembered his face as it looked when he kissed me for the first time on our wedding night. "But I will admit that when I look back on things, I feel rather more excited about them than I did as they transpired."

"I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Should I be shocked?" Ivy asked.

"No, not at all. I think that as we experience things, they happen too quickly to be thoroughly analyzed. I am sitting here contemplating the first time Philip kissed me after we were married and realize now how romantic and enrapturing it was. At the time, however, I didn't feel much other than fatigue. Had I been able to step back and observe us, I might have found the scene thrilling."

"But if you had been passionately in love with him, I think you would have felt the thrill. Surely passionate love doesn't require thorough analysis," Margaret said.

"You're right, of course," I replied. I sipped my port and slouched into the chair, but only for a moment. "We must return to the matter at hand. How am I going to determine the status of these things?"

"Will you ask the British Museum to assist you?" Ivy asked.

"No, I would prefer to avoid that for as long as possible. Do you suppose if my husband turns out to have really been a thief, I should be obligated to expose him?"

"I don't see how you could not," Margaret said.

"Perhaps if we determine that to be the case, we can concoct some way to return the original pieces to the museum and no one will be the wiser. Why tarnish his memory now?" Ivy suggested.

"I am going to consult with Mr. Aldwin Attewater. He should be able to tell me what is authentic."

"Can you trust him?" Ivy asked.

"I think I can. He spoke to me quite candidly in Paris. At any rate, I don't have to reveal to him why I suspect the museum is displaying reproductions." I paused. "You know that Colin Hargreaves very strongly warned me off the acquaintance. I do wonder about him. His behavior has been so strange at times. Did I ever tell you that Andrew actually told me to keep away from him? Said his charm could be deadly."

"What on earth could that mean?" Margaret asked.

"At the time I assumed he meant that he would trifle with my emotions; now I question that conclusion. Perhaps Andrew knows that Colin has connections to these forgers. He also told me that he has never felt he could trust Colin. It is almost as if he were warning me," I said, remembering the note I had found. "I wonder if he also warned Philip?"

For several hours after Ivy and Margaret had gone to bed, I sifted through every paper I could find in the library, hoping to locate some documentation of the antiquities. Philip's files were carefully organized, and I quickly found records of those objects displayed in his stunning gallery. There was no mention anywhere of the objects currently in the library, nor any suggestion that he knew of or suspected forgers at work in the museum.

Eventually I retired but still did not sleep. Finding myself alone in Philip's bed overwhelmed me, and I spent much of the night searching through the contents of the master bedroom. Philip had not been to the house since our marriage, and I felt that the room was a vestige of his bachelor life. His dressing room contained nothing of particular interest; the same could not be said of the bedroom itself. A low shelf standing below the windows across from the heavy four-poster bed held a surprising collection of books, among them Lady Audley's Secret, the edition of Beeton's Christmas Annual that contained A Study in Scarlet, a catalog of objects from the British Museum, and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, as well as a few volumes on the subject of big-game hunting. The selection of books kept in one's bedroom is highly personal and indicative of one's character, and after looking at these, I felt that I knew Philip more intimately than before. I loved the idea that he might have read Lady Audley on a blustery evening during which sleep eluded him, and I wished for the chance to nestle beside him with a novel of my own. How delightful it would have been to spend an evening in bed with him, reading and exchanging comments.

Ivy had told me about Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, but I had never read either of the novels. I picked up A Study in Scarlet to bring back to London and then noticed a series of leather volumes with unmarked spines identical to Philip's journal. As I suspected, they contained records of previous years of his life. I immediately opened the first book and began to read but stopped before I finished a page. Much though I wanted to know my husband better, I didn't feel entirely right reading his private thoughts, especially those written years before he ever knew me. I opened the book again.

Truly, she is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and cannot imagine finding more beauty in a single being.

Who was this trollop tempting my future husband? I ground my teeth as I skimmed ahead, jealously hoping that she had died of consumption before the relationship grew serious. No, not consumption; that would take too long and almost certainly ensure the formation of the dreaded attachment. I sighed when I realized I was reading the musings of a fifteen-year-old Philip on the subject of a horse. I replaced the volume on the shelf. It would be naïve to think that Philip had not loved before he met me. The former object or objects of his affection were likely to have had the good sense to return his feelings; reading about it would serve only to remind me of the foolishness of my own behavior toward him.

When Mrs. Henley had unpacked my valise, she put on the nightstand next to the bed the photograph of Philip I now always carried with me. I looked at it and wondered how I could ever doubt his character. No matter what I had found in the library, how could I believe that Philip would knowingly purchase artifacts that belonged to a museum?

Even as I thought this, the seeds of doubt were forming deep in my mind. I never knew him; all I knew now was what others wanted me to believe. I blocked these thoughts, not wanting reality to crush the romantic fantasy I so desperately longed to be true. I tried to imagine Philip dealing in the black market, skulking around with forgers. All this accomplished was to show me that I had a great difficulty imagining him doing much of anything; I didn't know him well enough to improvise his speech, mannerisms, or expressions. Once again the feeling of lost opportunity rushed over me, and I spent the remainder of this restless night crying, clutching the picture of the man over whom I suffered an unbearable feeling of regret.

18 AUGUST 1887

BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON

As always, it is a great relief to escape from the Season in London, although for the first time, doing so has meant leaving behind someone more dear to me than I could ever have expected. Perhaps next year will have K join me here.

Fournier's discus thrower more exquisite than I imagined. Retaliated by acquiring two more vases-one depicts the Judgment of Paris and is perhaps the finest work of its kind. Don't know that I shall be able to give it up, although there is no question that it belongs in the British Museum. Also saw Renoir et al. in Paris-bought six more pictures for the villa. Something in the informality of my friends' paintings fits beautifully on this unspoiled island. Must convince Monet to come here and paint for me-his views of the caldera would be incomparable. How I would love to see him attack with bold brushstrokes the light bouncing on the Aegean.