Chapter Twenty-Seven
For the most part, Christian kept his word. Ravenna put away Paul’s malachite ring in favor of the diamonds he’d bought her in Hatton Garden, and from that night on, he believed in her acquiescence completely. Every time a duchess or a celebrated actress inquired about those diamonds, Christian became that much easier to live with.
Even so, with the places he took her to show off that ring, Ravenna was still miserable. She’d agreed to it, so she tried to have an open mind, but from one social function to the next it was always the same: ten or twelve boring, aristocratic know-it-alls dressed up to the nines in ridiculous clothes, arguing about the same subjects night after night while they ate and drank and lounged about. One evening it was the situation in France. Another night they couldn’t stop talking about some poor marchioness whom someone had seen in the ugliest gown.
Ravenna sat quietly as she’d been told, listening to these comments and watching her husband trash this marchioness’s reputation. What do they say about me behind my back?
She only knew that when it came time for dancing, she was relieved to escape such tedious conversation and put her hand in Christian’s—a testament to the awfulness of their hosts, not to mention Christian’s newfound courtesy. She didn’t dance well, but that hardly mattered. Christian didn’t say as many nasty things when he had her in his arms. All he worried about was keeping his distance—that and maintaining a look of indifference.
In the end, he couldn’t manage it. As they twirled around the floor, more than once she glimpsed a smile creeping into Christian’s cheeks. She even caught him looking at her, and the love she saw in that instant, shining in his almond-shaped eyes without obsession but with pride, with affection, it moved her.
But he broke the spell by admonishing her, for she’d missed a step. It was as if he’d hoped to draw her attention away from the fact that she’d responded, that they’d shared something in that furtive glance.
And by day, she was responding. Christian took her to coffee houses. He took her to clubs. He took her to meet people whom he said were his friends, but who never showed up. Christian asked her to do these things. He wasn’t particularly nice about it, but at least he gave her the chance to say no. Since it was better than having him go off with Richardson to gamble at Brooks’s until six in the morning, Ravenna went where he took her gladly and she didn’t complain, didn’t grumble.
With the money he “should have waged on ponies,” Christian took her shopping in the West End where he made her try on dress after dress until he’d settled on something that made her “somewhat resemble Emma Hamilton.” She was given to understand he viewed this as a compliment since, soon afterward and wearing the new dress as requested, she was shown off in St. James’s Park on the appropriate day at the fashionable hour.
Christian swaggered around the grounds until nearly sunset, and finally Ravenna could stand no more. She asked if they could go back to the house, so she might give her son his bath.
Christian drowned out her request with coughing. “Must you embarrass me?” He glanced around nervously, making sure no one had heard her admission. “Only commoners actually bathe their own children. Now perk up, will you? Queensberry’s on his way over to see us and he’ll lend us money if he likes the look of you.”
They stayed at Hallett House, at Charing Cross, because Christian hadn’t enough money to rent rooms. James’s terms for the lease were simple—that Ravenna must write to him every day to prove she’d not been mistreated in London. In return, she’d receive his letters in kind, in which James kept her informed as to how the marriage plans were progressing, what he’d so far accomplished with his treatise, and when he’d be meeting with the Royal Society. Sir Joseph Banks, the society’s president, was coming to Wolvesfield, and as soon as their visit was completed, James said, he’d come to London. He’d be with Ravenna in two weeks’ time, and he’d kill Christian if she suffered so much as a paper cut.
But Christian had been polite, enthusiastic and, for the most part, pleasant. Not himself at all, really, and on the Thursday following their visit with Lady Salisbury, Ravenna began to be suspicious of the way his behavior had shifted from kindness to an altogether different level.
That Thursday there was a terrible storm. The rain beat down on London for hours, pouring from the waterspouts and the rooftop gutters in thick, fluid ropes. From behind the saloon curtains, she watched as the hawkers and newspaper vendors scattered under the sound of spring thunder, but in the distance she still heard the bells of the postman as he trudged through the puddles and the carriage traffic. Regardless of the storm, he’d bring James’s letter. He always did.
With the baby only halfway through one of his meals, Ravenna cut short his suckling and rearranged herself sufficiently to be seen by the postman. Christian usually got the mail, but that day he’d been skulking around in the bedroom upstairs, complaining about the dreary weather.
So thinking he hadn’t heard the postman’s bells, she propped the baby over her shoulder and negotiated the many rooms between the saloon and the front door. The baby was quiet, so she moved slowly, doing her best to keep him still. She knew the postman would wait at the door. Indeed, she heard his knock, but there was only one more tennis court-sized room to go, and she walked softly, so as not to upset the baby.
When she got to the entryway, she saw the front door standing wide open. The postman wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Instead, Christian stood with his back to her. Near his foot, smeared with rain, was a letter, surely James’s, and yet he paid no mind to it at all. He had something in his hands—another letter. Fast filling up with smudges from the storm, that bit of paper captivated Christian’s attention entirely.
He bent over it for a long moment, reading. Rain soaked through his outstretched sleeves, stained his waistcoat with splashes of dark. Still he stood there, seemingly unable to move but for staring at the words, and under the sound of passing coaches spattering water on the sidewalk, Ravenna thought she heard him whispering, Not now, not yet…
As the piece of paper dampened and withered in his hands, she stepped toward him. She reached out to gently tap his shoulder, to ask what was wrong. Yet before she could touch him, Christian had stepped out into the storm.
As if in a daze, he walked away. He lifted his face to the cloud-ridden sky, to the pounding of the rain, and even though she called out his name, Christian heard nothing but his own thoughts. He stepped off the curb. His arms fell limp at his slender sides as he drifted into the carriage traffic. That piece of paper, crumpled now against his thigh, slipped out of his hands and into the waiting puddles of the street as he stepped before horses, before phaetons rushing home.
She just caught sight of his shirt sleeves between hackney coaches rattling past, until finally, still shouting at the top of her lungs, she watched helplessly as he disappeared down St. Martin’s Lane.
She couldn’t go after him. She had the baby in her arms. All she could do was retrieve James’s letter while out in the street, Christian’s square of paper met with carriage wheels and horses’ hooves.