Page 40 of Better Love Next Time
He collected a coin from his desk, and after pocketing it in her apron, Althea said, “Begging your pardon, but she is sleepingsoundly, sir.”
“As you said. Likely she remained awake through the night.”
“Yes sir, but ’tis quitereallysoundly-like.”
How many ways could one use the word soundly in a sentence? Althea didn’t look like she was leaving. “Wait here.”
In breeches and shirtsleeves, he followed Althea to Kitty’s room. In the cool hue of morning, he saw Kitty’s sketchbook and a vibrant blue banyan draped long-wise on the bed. There was a woman in the banyan. It was Kitty with chalk between her slack fingers and her nose pressed against the sketchbook’s spine.
He shook her, and her flaccid form moved without protest.
Noting the glass on the table, he picked it up and sniffed. Laudanum. He looked back at his wife. Pale. Breathing between long stretches of stillness.
“It is soundly-like,” he said to Althea, unable to look away from his wife. When a deep breath shuddered from her, he finally took his own breath.
“Yes, sir. Like the dead.”
“Well, that might have gotten me here sooner.” He gathered Kitty in his arms and carried her to his rooms. She was absolutely oblivious to the world, her body limp as he directed Althea to draw back the linens and settled her in his bed.
Althea gaped at the woman, scandalous visions dancing in her grey eyes.
“She is my wife,” he said.
“I—I thought she was a widow.”
“In some respects, she is. Please have her belongings brought to my apartments. And if you wish, I’ll hire you as her maid. She wishes for a companion. You appear”—he motioned to her prayer book hanging at her hip—“not the usual sort of serving girl.”
“No, sir,” she huffed, “I am not the usual.”
“I’m certain your purse reflects thus.” How did she survive on a wench’s wage without offering her favors? By the leanness of her form, barely.
“Miss Althea Dixley,” she said.
“Pardon me?”
“My name.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you. Miss Dixley, I shall speak to Mr. Welles, and you may lodge in Madame’s old room. Also, have fresh water and food brought up in two hours.” There was no need for it now. Kitty was an exhausted lump of laudanum.
After Miss Althea Dixleyunpacked Kitty’s trunks, she handed Julian a Bible for his comfort and promised to return within the hour. Lobbing the Bible aside, he tucked the covers to Kitty’s chin and retrieved her sketchbooks.
Reclining beside her, he set the larger book on his lap and flipped to the last pages. The sketch of him could only have been from the day before. And there was the sign, and the unfinishedValiant,and Sam Worthing. And an infant. He leafed forwardand back to root the drawing in time but none of the sketches were linear. The infant had no place, no name. Maybe, a dream.
Another was of Kitty, a flower in her hand. A man sat beside her at a wrought-iron table. A dark-haired man with the sly look of a rogue, one he recognized. She had named it:Anthony at Tuileries Garden.
“Hardly a friend,” he said, glaring down at Kitty’s sleeping countenance.
A pastel of Anthony and the lovely widow he’d made a conquest of (and ultimately deserted) at the Mont Cenis Bridge. Another of Julian in the shadow of the Rome coliseum.
He paused at a page with three studies of the boat he had built for her, theFairy.On another was Daisy, her guinea pig. Pages of birds, horses, a chicken she had named Louis, though it was a hen, not a rooster.
He continued his study, through the smaller book, hundreds of sketches, each growing in artistic fluency: Georgiana, Uncle William, Father Dunlevy, Mrs. Higglewaite, Clara the governess, Julian from ten to nineteen, actual and imaginary. Smiling, kissing her, lying with her on the riverbank, in meadows. Shirtless. Julian as a boy standing at Notfelle steps with flowers.
His father?
When had Kitty met his father? Never. But he was here, executed in detailed strokes standing by a riverbank and condensed to his callous essence with that stare Julian had been subjected to his entire life. His gut tightened in knots just to see it on paper. He had the urge to rip the page from the book and burn it. No. She had never known the earl. It was Uncle William.
He found the lock of his hair tied in a blue ribbon that she had snipped from his head the first day they had met. What a day. A wonderful day of promising beginnings. But that was childhood. And every day brought fewer beginnings.
