Lost Among the Living(62)



I turned in surprise. “Colonel Mabry.”

He gave me a quick, formal bow, elegant in his dark suit. “Mrs. Forsyth was kind enough to invite me, though I’ve shamefully put off deciding on one of her artworks.” His gaze moved up the walls, taking in the various canvases. “I believe I’ll have to make a decision soon.”

“Yes,” I said, my voice perhaps sharper than I intended. “You should. It isn’t polite to prevaricate.”

The look he gave me from beneath his salt-and-pepper eyebrows was unreadable. He clasped his hands behind his back and gave no answer.

“Tell me, Colonel,” I said, “how long have you been a lover of art?”

“Mrs. Manders, are you quite all right?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said. He began to stroll around the room, and I followed at his side. My exhaustion and nerves had amplified the effects of the champagne, I realized. “I don’t think I thanked you, Colonel, for letting me see my husband’s file.”

He looked at me sideways, a glance that was speculative and, inexplicably, had a note of dread in it. “It was nothing, I assure you.”

“So much interesting information,” I said. “Even a silly woman like me could learn so much.”

“And what exactly did you learn, Mrs. Manders?” he asked.

I thought it over. The champagne had made me dizzy, my tongue loose in my head. “Do you know, I don’t think I am going to tell you.”

“Mrs. Manders.” He stopped walking and faced me. Looking at him was like looking into a shallow pool and realizing that you couldn’t see the bottom, could not fathom where it was. “You are upset, and I believe we both understand why. But I feel obliged to give you a warning. Things have been very difficult for you—but they are going to get even more difficult, I’m afraid.”

“What does that mean?” My voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “Tell me.”

He did not reply, and I would have said more, but a hand reached out and grasped me.

“Mrs. Manders!” Robert leaned in and put a heavy arm around my shoulders. “You really must put a sack on your head, my dear, so you don’t outshine the bride. How are you, sir?”

I froze. Robert—who had been drinking since before the party started, by the smell of him—pumped the colonel’s hand, then led me away, his beefy hand still on my bare shoulder. I swallowed bile. “It’s a party,” he hissed at me through gin-soaked breath. “Act like it, if you please.”

I circulated around the room under Robert’s clammy grip, being introduced to strangers, until he stopped us by a pillar, took two drinks from a passing waiter, and handed me one.

“I don’t want this,” I said.

“Drink it,” he commanded, taking a long swig of his own.

I sipped the champagne, its sweetness on my tongue now making me gag.

“You must loosen up, Jo,” Robert said, his bleary eyes watching me. “Take my advice. You may be the best-looking woman in the room, but your expression is positively sour. Mrs. Mandel’s cousin-in-law is a baronet, and Staffron brought some of his richer banking friends. You’ll never catch any of the eligible men here unless you flirt.”

I stepped out of his reach and took another sip of my drink. “What do you care, anyway? You should go paw one of the neighbors’ wives.”

“Careful, now.” Robert raised his glass and gestured to the room around us. “I gave you a warning to watch your tongue. I spotted you right away, you know. Making nice with that old stick of a colonel—he could be your father, my dear. Did you know that Wilde, the lawyer, was observing you two?”

“What are you talking about?” I looked around the room, but didn’t see Dottie’s man of business.

“Quite interested, he was,” Robert said. “Though you could do better, even as a mistress.”

Before I could escape him, the band switched to a jaunty march, and Dottie stepped up on the raised dais, waving her arms to get the attention of everyone in the room. She wore, unbelievably, a jacket and skirt—though these were of curious yellow-green and sewn with glass beads that reflected the light in shards. The suit jacket was buttoned down the front and sported an Oriental collar that sat neatly in a ribbon around her narrow neck. She wore the same hairstyle as ever.

“My lovely wife,” Robert hissed drunkenly in my ear.

“Shut up,” I said to him, and he laughed.

There were speeches—lots of speeches. Dottie said a few words, clipped yet heartfelt. Mr. Staffron, who I’d barely spoken to since he came to stay, spoke sonorously; then his wife, Cora’s mother, came to the stage, babbling and dabbing her tears with a handkerchief. Robert left my side, mounted the stage, and made a few jokes that had the room laughing uncomfortably. I stood and listened, my feet pinching, and instead of the twinkling lights of the party, I saw the leaves swirling upward; instead of the wash of words from the dais, I heard the shrill whistle; and as Cora and Martin climbed the steps, I watched Princer’s stomach, clotted and stinking of blood, soaring over me again and again. As I hovered alone and unnoticed, my glass in my hand, for a moment the terrors of the woods were more real to me than the pleasant civilization of this room.

I blinked and tried to focus on Cora and Martin. Martin spoke first, declaring how lucky he was to have found such a beautiful woman. Cora followed, uncharacteristically shy, her few sentences stilted and rehearsed, her thin face frozen in stage fright as she thanked everyone for coming and declared how happy she was. They stood a foot apart and did not touch.

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