Remembrance Read online

  He loved Catherine, loved her with all his heart. Four and a half years ago he had seen her at a garden party at his aunt’s house. He had taken one look into those blue eyes, one look at that white-blonde hair and he was lost. Never since had he cared about any woman other than her.

  But things had gone wrong on their wedding night. Very wrong. Very, very wrong. As much as he wanted her, he couldn’t make her his. Catherine had been so innocent that she’d not known there was anything wrong. She had loved the way he’d caressed her naked body, loved the way he held her. After hours of touching and kissing, she had not understood why her husband had slammed out of the room in a rage. He knew that Catherine felt that she had done something wrong, but she had no idea what.

  The next morning he’d told himself that his inability had been due to wanting her so much, loving her so much that he was in pain. And it was due to the unfamiliarity of her. Perhaps if they knew each other better he could relax around her.

  So he had spent time with her, traveled with her, laughed with her, confided in her, but all that did was make him need her, make him love her more than he had when he’d first married her.

  He wanted her so much. He ached with wanting her. Everything about her enticed him: the way she walked, how she spoke, what she spoke of. The way she held a teacup made sweat roll down the back of his collar.

  After a year of living near her and being unable to consummate the marriage, he knew he had to get away from her, so he began to travel, began to stay away from her, hoping that not seeing her every day would free him from what he felt for her.

  And there were other women. He had to prove to himself that he was still a man. He left Catherine in the country and spent his time in London, drinking and seducing women. Never did he have any problem with any of them. Only Catherine made him feel less than a man.

  Somewhere during the three years of their marriage—if it could be called such—he’d started to tell himself that their problem was her fault, not his. There was obviously nothing wrong with him, so it must be her.

  His Uncle Hubert had been concerned about Tavistock spending so much time away from Catherine. “Women get into mischief when they have no one to occupy their time,” he’d said. “You should give her a few children to take care of. Keep her busy in bed.” He had not understood Tavistock’s angry reply and subsequent storming out of the house.

  When Tavistock had seen the way Catherine reacted to the lovely Fiona, Catherine’s jealousy had touched something deep within him. He didn’t like himself much for it, but he wanted to hurt Catherine, just as she was innocently hurting him. He’d begun to mention Fiona at every opportunity. He told Catherine of Fiona’s perfume, of her clothes. He suggested that Catherine ask Fiona how she made her hair so soft. With every word he spoke, he saw Catherine grow more and more angry, until, at last, her anger matched Tavistock’s.

  But everything backfired when Catherine wrote those letters. He knew very well that she’d never had sexual relations with any man, not him or anyone else. She was too closely looked after for that. Whenever Tavistock returned from a trip, he called her maid to him and asked for a full report on every minute of Catherine’s doings. Her greatest pleasures seemed to be in patronizing opera singers and buying pretty little ornaments from some Russian émigré.

  Tavistock knew very well that she had written those letters to make him think she was desirable. She’d never say so, since she was as proud as any man, but he knew what she was after. Catherine wanted him to realize that other men did like her and want her, just as he seemed to want Fiona.

  But Tavistock had some pride of his own, and he couldn’t very well explain to Catherine that the problem was him and not her.

  Everything would have blown over if it hadn’t been for Aya, his old nanny. She had always been very possessive of her charge. When Tavistock was a child she used to pinch him to make him cry before she presented him for the obligatory 6 P.M. visit to his parents. It didn’t take too many appointments before the visits were suspended; his parents did not want to be bothered with a screaming, runny-nosed brat in the drawing room every evening. When his parents instructed the nanny to bring the child back when he was old enough to have learned some manners, Aya had what she wanted. Her sweet little Tavey was hers alone.

  For all that Tavistock could fool other people into thinking that his little wife bored him too much to remain at home, Aya knew the truth. She knew that Tavistock was obsessed with Catherine. From the moment he had first seen Catherine, he had thought of no one else. Only she was on his mind. Aya knew that Catherine had stolen Tavistock from her in a way that only deep love could, and this made her hate Catherine.

  Tavistock pretended that he didn’t know how Catherine’s letters became known to the public, but he did. In a naively clumsy way, Catherine had “accidentally” left the letters lying about so he could find them. Truthfully, he had enjoyed reading them, as he always enjoyed her stories. Catherine could go to the most boring, ordinary function in the world and come away with truly hilarious stories. When they were first married he would sit through a tea party with some old crone pouring tea and talking endlessly about her garden. It would be all he could do to keep from nodding off. But later, when he and Catherine were driving home, she would entertain him with her accounts of all sorts of subtle things that had happened during the tea party. Catherine told of big-nosed, bony daughters who were dying of love for him. Her “proof” was the way the girl had handed Tavistock a teacup and the way she had asked if he wanted milk or lemon. When Catherine described the gathering to him, Tavistock always felt that he had attended a different party than she had. Where had he been when all this happened? He came to look forward to what Catherine told him had happened much more than what did happen.

  But after the first year of their marriage, when Tavistock’s anger had gradually increased, Catherine had stopped telling her stories. She’d said, “When I am unhappy, there are no stories in my head.” After that he’d started traveling and staying away from her.

  But he always came back to her. He missed her so much when he was away. When he was away from her he felt that part of him was absent, as though he’d left part of his body or his mind in another place.

  So why could he not perform in bed with her? He had no idea, but no matter what he tried, nothing happened between them.

  So Catherine had tried to get his attention by writing letters that said she’d been seduced by every man in England. Tavistock had read the letters and laughed, but then Aya mailed two of the letters to the newspapers, and that had stopped the laughter. She mailed some of them to the wives of the men with whom Catherine said she’d had torrid affairs. She sent others to the men whose names were at the top of the letters.

  Tavistock didn’t know who was worse, himself or the men who knew that they’d never touched Lord de Grey’s pretty little wife. Each man liked for others to think that he had cuckolded the man who often made their wives weak-kneed with lust. There wasn’t a man in the salons of England who hadn’t heard a wife or mistress mention the beauty of Adam Tavistock, or the virility he exuded when he walked across a room. Not one man hadn’t heard how Lord de Grey looked at his little wife so hotly her hair might catch fire, and why didn’t her husband look at her like that?

  The letters gave these men an opportunity to get back their own. Often, they denied having touched the pretty little blonde, but they all said the words in a way that actually said they were lying, that they were being noble and trying to save the woman’s honor.

  So what did Tavistock do to save his own honor? Did he remain married to Catherine, unable to make love to his own wife? He would rather like to have children. He’d like to have a son to carry on his name, then he’d like to have some girls who looked just like Catherine. Girls to tell him stories and look at him as their mother did. The only thing he could think of that would be better than having Catherine would be to have half a dozen Catherines.

  But that wasn’t