The Ripper's Wife(9)

I wouldn’t know till afterward, but, as a surprise for me, Jim ordered pretty porcelain plates, figurines, vases, and paintings, charming bric-a-brac, to adorn my bedroom and had it all shipped back to England. He asked an old friend, Mrs. Matilda Briggs, whom he had described as “a marvel of efficiency” and was trusting to oversee the furnishing and decoration of our house, to transform my suite into a little eighteenth-century wonderland for me where I could reign like Marie Antoinette over my own little kingdom.

In a quaint little antique shop Jim and I found a miniature of a handsome dark-haired man with a haunting, melancholy visage. The shopkeeper said it was Count Axel Fersen, the Queen’s gallant lover, her own dear Swedish Sir Galahad, chivalrous and loyal to the last breath. Jim bought it for me along with a miniature of Marie Antoinette so that these two star-crossed lovers might be reunited to gaze into each other’s eyes from across my crowded whatnot shelf. “You are so good to me!” I cried, and threw my arms around his neck and kissed him right there in front of the shopkeeper.

In the elegant emporiums, Jim sat proudly, every inch the elegant English gentleman, occupying a gilt chair as though it were a king’s throne. Sometimes there was a glass of wine or a fine cigar in his hand; other times he fiddled idly with his favorite walking stick, the ebony one topped with a substantial golden knob made in the shape of a miniature bust of a rather grim-faced Queen Victoria, his thumb boldly caressing “the old girl’s bosom,” and watched as I paraded past him in the latest Parisian fashions.

There were gowns for every season and situation. Light and airy sprigged floral and pastel confections trimmed with ruffles, smart suits of soft velvet, raw silk, or crisp linen, afternoon, walking, at home, evening dresses, and riding togs. No plain, boring broadcloth for me, Jim said; I must have violet-blue velvet to match my eyes, with a jabot of lace at my throat and ostrich plumes on my hat. Satins, silks, brocades, damasks, taffetas, chiffons, and velvets in a variety of colors. Jim’s favorite was a gold-lace-festooned ball gown, with a bouquet of red velvet roses on the bustle cascading down onto the train, in his favorite color, arsenic green, against which, he said, my beauty seemed especially strong and vibrant. “The sight of you in that color is like a tonic to me,” he said as I twirled and danced before him.

He chose a bathing costume of bright coral pink edged in black for me instead of the traditional reserved and respectable white-bordered nautical blue or black. We spent hours selecting marvelous hats, each one as decadent as a dessert, trimmed with feathers, wax fruit, silk flowers, or stuffed birds; high-heeled shoes with almond-point toes; leather boots and boudoir slippers; silk stockings, handbags, gloves, paisley shawls, and parasols; capes, coats, and muffs, sables and ermine; necklaces, brooches, and bracelets; rings for my fingers and bobbing jewels for my ears; ornaments for my hair; lace-trimmed undergarments; silk and lace nightgowns, negligees, and dressing gowns. My favorite was a pale blue peignoir trimmed with wispy, tickling feathers that made me giggle. There was even a gay and daring red and white candy-striped corset with red satin suspenders to hold my stockings up.

While I laughed and spun before him like a little girl playing dress-up, worry secretly gnawed at the back of my mind. Could we really afford all this? I wanted to ask Jim, but I remembered Mama’s advice about discussing finances, so I bit my tongue. Jim seemed happy; buying me things seemed to give him as much pleasure as it did me, and I didn’t want to spoil it for either of us. If money must be worried about, time enough for that later, I decided. Tomorrow shouldn’t be allowed to spoil today. Right now we’re still dancing; the fiddler can wait to be paid!

Back at the hotel, with my hair unbound, in a boudoir gown of lavender silk overlaid with sheer white net embroidered with a swarm of shimmering, iridescent pearly-winged butterflies, I sat on Jim’s lap and grew blissfully giddy and dizzy from his countless kisses and the bubbly gold champagne from the glass he held to my lips. He fastened a necklace of amethysts framed by golden flowers and opal-winged butterflies around my throat and slid a luscious lavender and creamy mint jade-winged butterfly comb into the “molten gold waves” of my hair and told me how much he loved and adored me before he lowered me onto the polar bear rug before the fire and made love to me until we fell into an exhausted slumber.

The next day he took me to a photographer’s studio and, holding a pink rose and wearing the cerulean-blue satin and silver lace gown he had bought me and the pearls Mama had given me, I imitated Madame Vigée-Lebrun’s famous portrait of Marie Antoinette. Afterward, an artist would carefully apply colors to tint it. It would always be Jim’s favorite picture of me. He would even take it with him when he traveled without me; it would proudly adorn his desk in a beautiful silver frame until the day he died.

At the races and gambling tables I stood beside him, b-reasts heaving, lips parted, with ecstatic excitement, eyes bright and intent upon the horses, cards, ebony-eyed dice, piles of clacking chips as sweet and enticing as candy, or the spinning black and red wheel that could make or break fortunes. Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost, but Jim said that like the diamond horseshoe he felt naked without, I always brought him luck. He had even taken to kissing my hand after I had stroked the horseshoe before he placed his bets.

We both believed that games of chance were the most fascinating, exciting thing in the world; nothing surpassed the thrill that took possession of us when we played, not even the passion we found together in bed. We reveled in Lady Luck’s fickle and flighty embrace, constantly trying to coax, court, and woo her. She was aloof and cool one moment, passionate and all-embracing the next. Beautiful and pitiless, sometimes she hurt us, but we always came back for more. Many years later, when Lady Luck had long since spurned and turned her back on me, I would see a most delightful film, full of dancing, fun, farce, and mistaken identities, The Gay Divorcee, in which the debonair Fred Astaire loftily spoke the words “Chance is the Fool’s name for Fate.” I wish those words had come to me in those heady, halcyon days with Jim; I would have embroidered them on samplers to deck the walls and handkerchiefs for both of us, and even on the hems of my petticoats, they so perfectly expressed how we felt.