On a Cold Dark Sea(18)

Charlie Van Hausen seemed crafted for that very purpose. Fresh out of Harvard, son of a financier father and socialite mother who knew all the right people on both sides of the Atlantic, he had the airy confidence of a privileged Boston upbringing. A more sophisticated version of John Moss, Esme thought, out to enjoy himself above all else. The kind of boy she might have fallen for, before she was married, and who would have most certainly broken her heart.

They chatted over dinner at Lord Riverton’s Belgravia mansion, then crossed paths again at a concert hosted by the American ambassador. Esme had overdressed in a wool dress and thick stockings and began to feel faint in the crowded, stuffy room. She whispered to Hiram that she needed some air, and he nodded without looking at her. Esme slipped out of the reception hall into a circular waiting room, where she felt slightly better but still light-headed. She asked a passing footman for directions outside, and he pointed her to the back terrace.

The night was cool but sticky, the damp air preparing to solidify into rain. The terrace overlooked a formal garden, with a cherub-topped fountain forming the centerpiece of neatly trimmed hedgerows. Esme wondered half-heartedly if she should install a fountain in the garden at home. She had no real interest in landscaping, but she’d have to find some way to fill her days.

“Do you mind?”

Esme turned and saw Charlie behind her, a cigarette tucked between his index and middle fingers. She shook her head, and he pulled a matchbox from his jacket pocket. He lit a match, the flame illuminating his face. Close up, Charlie looked less boyish, with his dark, solemn eyes and enigmatic half smile. He sucked in deeply and then exhaled, turning his head to blow the smoke away from Esme.

“Would you like one?” he asked casually, as if passing the salt at dinner.

Esme laughed in surprise. “Do you know many girls who smoke?”

“You’re hardly a girl, are you? You’re a married woman.”

Esme should have been offended. He was being shockingly overfamiliar, given their slight acquaintance. But she wasn’t at all upset. The way he was looking at her—daring her to enjoy herself—took her back to those debutante days in Philadelphia, when she was the focus around which every party swirled.

“Do you know many married ladies who smoke?” she asked.

“A few,” he said. Again, he brought the cigarette to his lips. Slowly, he drew the smoke in and out, showing her how to do it. “But they don’t tell their husbands.”

Esme wondered if it wasn’t coincidence that brought him outside. Had Charlie seen her leave and followed her? She liked the thought of being pursued.

“All right, then,” Esme said decisively. “I’ll try.”

She had never understood how men could breathe in smoke, and the process was as unpleasant as she’d imagined. But Esme very much enjoyed the ritual surrounding it. She liked the way Charlie grinned when he handed her a cigarette and demonstrated how to hold it. The way she had to lean in when he held out the match. The gestures lured them together, and when Esme winced and coughed, Charlie took the cigarette from her fingers and finished it himself. She looked at his lips, pressing down where hers had been only seconds before. The silence between them wasn’t empty, as it was with Hiram. There was almost too much Esme wanted to tell Charlie, but she didn’t know how to start.

The distant sound of applause carried out from the residence.

“Your first cigarette,” Charlie said, raising the stubbed end in the gesture of a toast. “Congratulations.”

“Two puffs,” Esme said. “I don’t know if that counts.”

“You can have it both ways,” he said. “You can say, in all truth, that you’ve never smoked a cigarette, because you didn’t finish. But if you ever want to shock your society friends, you can say you have.”

Charlie had hit upon the very conundrum that tortured Esme every day: Would she be the respectable, dull wife that Hiram expected, or the risqué wife who embarrassed him?

“Better not to say anything at all,” Esme said.

“It’ll be our secret.”

As Charlie looked at her, it felt like they’d agreed to something, but she wasn’t sure what. Esme nodded briskly and turned; she didn’t want to be seen walking in with him. Concertgoers were already milling in the hallway. As Esme looked for Hiram, she also kept a discreet eye on Charlie, making sure she knew where he was, even after she was back at her husband’s side. When Hiram said he was ready to leave, Charlie was across the room, so she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. But that didn’t matter. She was quite certain she’d see him again.

And she was right. Charlie belonged to a set of rich young Americans who thought nothing of sailing off to Europe on a whim, steamships and railways enabling their twentieth-century version of a grand tour. They were always in motion, to the theater or day trips in the countryside, and invitations to these excursions began arriving at Esme’s hotel. Hiram, busy setting up a partnership with a British bank, encouraged Esme to go without him. It was all aboveboard: Esme and Charlie were never alone together, and she made sure he wasn’t the only object of her flirtatious remarks. Somewhere along the way she started calling him Charlie, but he never addressed Esme as anything but Mrs. Harper.

A week before Esme was due to sail home, she and Hiram were invited to a house party at the country home of Lady Tiddle, née Sarah Neuberger, a distant cousin of Charlie’s who’d bagged herself an English aristocrat in the Gilded Age era of transatlantic marriages. Esme begged Hiram to go, but he had no interest. He had nothing in common with her new friends and thought they were a bad influence. Furious, Esme told him she’d go anyway, though it meant they’d be apart for three days. Later, she would tell herself that what happened that weekend was Hiram’s fault, that she wouldn’t have looked elsewhere for comfort if she hadn’t felt so lonely. Or was that just what she told herself to justify her actions? Esme had been both admonished and spoiled all her life, told to act a certain way but never punished when she didn’t. She was ripe for corruption.