Lost Among the Living(63)

There was dancing afterward; the four-piece orchestra began again, more champagne flowed, and couples began to rotate demurely around the dance floor. I was asked to dance by one of Dottie’s art buyers and then Cora’s cousin, the doctor from Harley Street. I accepted numbly and moved around the dance floor with each man in a daze, making mechanical conversation. Mabry’s words went through my head in time with the music. Things are going to get even more difficult, I’m afraid.

I took another glass of champagne, wishing I had a watch so I could decide when to leave. The champagne was making me even more tired, and a pulse in my temples was beginning to pound. The practiced tones of the orchestra sounded like screeching. Something was wrong. It wasn’t just my feeling out of sorts—there was a thick tension in the air, as of a coming thunderstorm. I looked around the room and realized that Dottie, Robert, and Martin were gone.

The din of voices and music in the room seemed to grow louder. The backs of my eyes throbbed. Where had the family disappeared to? Why had they left their own party? I spied Cora in the corner of the room, nodding and smiling at someone, the corners of her eyes tired now, her smile clenched and tense. I started toward her, but someone intercepted me—David Wilde, clad in a formal black suit. “Mrs. Manders,” he said. “Please do me the honor of a dance.”

“Mr. Wilde,” I said.

Mr. Wilde smiled at me. He looked handsome and distinguished, with the silver in his hair and his matching silver eyes. He crooked his right elbow in my direction. “I promise I’m adept,” he said.

It was a strangely unbalanced feeling, dancing with a one-armed man. But he maneuvered me expertly around the room, his right hand firm on my waist, as if he danced with women all the time. Beneath my hand, the shoulder of his wasted arm felt bulky and strong beneath his jacket.

“Did you not bring your wife tonight?” I managed to ask him.

“Mrs. Wilde dislikes social functions,” he replied. “Mrs. Manders, I’m afraid I should apologize for the circumstances of our first meeting.”

“You needn’t,” I said. “You were tasked with giving your opinion of me as Martin’s possible wife, and you gave it.”

“Did Mrs. Forsyth tell you that?” he asked in surprise.

“She never had to. I figured it out from the first minute I got back to Wych Elm House.” My tongue was running away with me, I realized vaguely, and I could not control it. “Since we are at Martin’s engagement party, Mr. Wilde, it no longer figures. I understand what it means to be obliged to do something as part of your employment.”

He was quiet for a moment as the room spun around us. I blinked, trying not to topple, and realized I was clinging to him a little tighter in order to stay upright. He responded by angling his body and placing his hand even more firmly on my waist—not like one of Casparov’s nasty old gropes, but a gentlemanly effort to keep me discreetly vertical. “Do you ever wonder, Mrs. Manders,” he said, “whether my assessment of you was positive or negative?”

“No,” I said to him. “No.”

“Perhaps I won’t tell you, then.”

“You told her I was respectable,” I said, my loose tongue moving again. “You questioned me about my prospects and concluded that I wasn’t after money, so I was probably trustworthy. You told me in detail about Frances to see if I would be shocked or horrified, and I passed that test, too.” I waited for him to protest, but he did not. “But you knew about Mother,” I continued. “You’d already researched my background. I suppose you wondered if the madness in my family would mix with the madness in Martin’s, if we had children.”

The silence he gave me after that was appalled—but not, I knew, at me. “It must be difficult,” Mr. Wilde said quietly, “to be such a perceptive woman.”

The dance was winding to a close, and we slowed. “Perceptive or mad,” I said. “Do you ever wonder if they’re the same thing?”

The music stopped, and he stepped back from me. “What do you mean?” he asked me.

“I just wonder sometimes,” I said. I swayed a little, and he reached out and gripped my arm with his good hand. “I’m well acquainted with madness, as you pointed out. My mother died. Sometimes I wonder if it’s only the mad people who see the truth, or who say it out loud.” I pulled my arm slowly from his grip. “Thank you for the dance.”

A new dance started, and I returned to the sidelines. I drank more champagne. David Wilde danced with a different woman and did not look my way. Well done, Jo, I thought. Now he thinks you’re insane.

I looked around and saw that the family was still gone, and Cora had gone, too. My head pounded. Something was wrong, terribly, terribly wrong. The orchestra was playing a lively tune, trying to keep the dancers going, but people were beginning to notice. This was not how the party was supposed to go. I was getting curious looks, as I was the only family member—such as I was—left. I shrank back into the corner, hoping no one would approach me and ask. I don’t know; I’m not really family. Perhaps the champagne had run out, or there had been an emergency in the kitchen.

I turned and saw Frances Forsyth’s face, beneath an arch of flowers across the room. She was wearing her gray dress and her pearls, and for a second she watched me before someone passed in front of her and she disappeared. Had I imagined her? I didn’t know. I moved across the room toward the empty space where I’d seen her.