Part 13 (1/2)

”How wonderful,” I said.

”We'll need simple furniture for the ballroom. Nothing too elaborate. It should be easy to move but elegant. Have you visited Goupil's yet?”

I felt an urge to take off my gloves, such a foreign thought that it surprised me. I pushed it away, but it was back then, fiercer than before. My fingers clenched against William's hands.

”Is something wrong?”

”No,” I said. ”No.” But my fingers were sweating inside my gloves, and the fine seams irritated my skin. I wanted nothing more than to take them off. I could think only of how fine it would feel to have the air on my skin. I fought the urge. How odd it was-I had not felt this way since I was a girl, when I was growing accustomed to wearing them. I could not take them off while we were dancing. It would be improper, against tradition and etiquette. I would not take them off. But the urge was so great within me that it was like a physical pain, and I could fight it no longer. Before I knew it, I had taken my hands from William's, muttering ”Excuse me” while I pulled them off furiously, as if they were burning my skin. I let them drop to the floor, and then I could breathe.

William's face was baffled. ”What are you doing?” he hissed, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed. ”Good G.o.d, Lucy, what has come over you?”

I prepared to explain, then paused, suddenly horrified at what I'd done. I wasn't certain why I'd gone against convention. I had never dared to do such a thing, and gloves had not bothered me for years and years. Why they should do so today- ”I could not wear them another moment,” I explained weakly.

William bent and picked them up, holding them out to me. ”Put them on.”

I stared at that pile of crumpled white kid. I did not want to touch them again, and to put them on . . . but that was ridiculous. It wasn't me. I didn't understand.

”Come, Lucy. You're causing a scene.”

People were indeed beginning to look our way. I took the gloves from William and forced them on, stretching my fingers into the kid, pulling them over my arms, and it felt as if my skin were shrinking, smothering. Take them off, I thought, and that voice was so insistent, it took all my strength of will to deny it, to take William's hands again.

He swept me onto the floor, though his face was set in a tight mask, and I felt his disapproval. I danced with him, but all I could think of was how I wanted to feel his hands bare against mine. How much I wished to touch him the way I had at Bailey's Beach that long-ago day when he pulled me close.

The next afternoon I was alone in Victor Seth's office. Irene had shown me in, telling me he would be late, and now I wandered around the room, running my fingers along the leather spines of the books littering his shelves, many of them with fading foreign t.i.tles. Du Sommeil et des etats a.n.a.logues, Sur la Baquette, Divinatoire, Ill.u.s.trations of the Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Health and Disease, Essays on Phrenology, The Principles of Medical Psychology, and The Temples of Aesculapius. The last one intrigued me. I had just taken it down when the door opened and Dr. Seth came in.

He looked flushed, as if he had come some distance, and quickly. He still wore his coat and his hat, which he took off with an apology when he saw me.

”You're late, Doctor,” I said.

”Forgive me. I was unavoidably delayed.” While he unb.u.t.toned his coat, I opened the book in my hand, letting the pages turn without intervention, watching the words go by. Then he was behind me. He took the book from my hand and snapped it shut. Startled, I stepped away.

”You move too quietly,” I said.

”The Temples of Aesculapius,” he read. ”Are you interested in the ancient Romans?”

”I hardly know.”

”Asklepios was the son of Apollo. The cult named after him flourished for many years, well into the Christian era. They built temples for healing. Particularly for hysteria.”

”Did they use hypnosis as well?”

”A form of it. They worked often through dreams.” He put the book back on the shelf. ”Now, Lucy, suppose you tell me how the Morris ball went last night.”

”William was worried that I might do something foolish.”

”Did you?”

”I don't know,” I said. I moved away from him, running my gloved fingers along the edge of his desk, picking up a fine film of dust. ”I had the strangest thought while we were dancing.”

”Yes?”

”I took off my gloves,” I said. ”I couldn't bear the feel of them another moment. It was so odd.”

”How did taking them off make you feel?”

”As if I could breathe again,” I said. ”It was such a relief-at first. And then I was appalled. I haven't done anything like that since I was a girl.”

”Before your father threw your paints away.”

”Yes.” I glanced at him, and then I remembered. ”But I was always too rebellious then. Thankfully, I've learned my place.”

”You were rebellious,” Dr. Seth repeated. He leaned against the bookcase lazily, but his eyes were alert, intense. ”How so?”

”With my painting, of course.” I moved to the window. ”But even before that. There was the poetry, and before that, the church.”

”The church? I fail to see how those things are rebellious. It sounds like the usual course of events for a young girl.”

I laughed a little nervously. ”Yes, perhaps. But not the way I went about it. I was in the grip of religious fervor. I went nearly every day until Papa put an end to it, and then I fought him. I cried and cried. I told him I would run away and join a convent.”

”What happened?”

”It pa.s.sed. That was when I found Byron.” I touched the window; the cold of the day seeped through the gla.s.s and my gloves into my fingertips. ”He thought I would run off to the Continent and learn terrible French ways and be irredeemable. It would not do. I am his only child.”

”Would you have done that, given the chance?”

”I don't know,” I said, and the knowledge made me sad, though I was not sure why. ”I don't know what I would have done.”

In the gla.s.s, I saw the vague image of him behind me, but only as the fading color of his reflection, only the slight movement of his fingers as they moved upon his face. Then he said, ”The window. Once again, Lucy, you seem drawn to the window.”

I jerked back my hand.

”How old were you when your mother died?”

I turned, confused by his question. ”Ten.”

”When did you turn to religion?”

”I suppose it was not long after that. I was eleven, perhaps, or twelve.”

”How did she die?”

I did not like to talk of it. ”She drowned.”

”Were you with her when it happened?”

”No, I wasn't. That is, I was at the summer house, but I wasn't at the beach with her.”

”Was this in Newport?”

”No, no, it was long before we took a cottage there. It was upriver-on the Hudson.” I remembered it well, though I had been there so long ago. ”It was a beautiful place. It had been my great-grandfather's summer house.”