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Chapter Nine

Forthenby had not touched her.
 
In the suite they had taken in Paris, Serafina Valance had large apartments of her own, which were filled, daily, with white roses. There was a sleek grand piano with ivory keys, and a positive wealth of sheet music for her to play upon it. She had a French maid to dress her hair and care for her gowns, an allowance which gave her enough money for every little whim that took her fancy, and a suitable chaperone who would see her through the streets while she looked at the fashions, the churches, the art and antiquities. 

But her husband had not touched her. 

Now he had acquired her, he seemed to have lost interest in her all together. 

That was not quite true: Forthenby had stirred himself to introduce her to a bewildering array of elegant French ladies, and would sometimes linger among them, paying her absent attentions – his behaviour courteous, but without warmth. It was only in the evenings they spent any time together, and then only if they attended an opera, a concert, or the theatre. Then, he would sit beside her, silent, as though absorbed deeply in the music - something she knew could not be true. 

At first, all she had known was relief. But her school-room French was hardly sufficient for the company in which she found herself, and the society was so glittering, so lively that she soon felt cowed, dowdy, provincial. Had not she been taught to hold her head high and behave with the same set of accomplishments where-ever she found herself, she would have been quite crushed by it. 

Worse, some days after her marriage, she noticed that Forthenby’s insolent manservant was watching her with what could only be pity. He would stray from his duties to offer her little attentions, marks of friendship and compassion. She could not bear the insult of it. 

Yet where else was she to look for a friend? Her new maid, Laurette, was genteel, competent, and disapproving. Even had Laurette been confiding, her English had a strong accent that it was difficult to understand her, unless they spoke of simple matters of the toilette. 

So, alone, Serafina played her piano, read novels and books of philosophy, and wrote letters to the ones who loved her. In those to her mother she tried to reign in her desperation, telling only of beautiful sights and sparkling society, for she knew that Mr Tooting would read them. She wrote a little, however, of the way she missed female companionship. When she wrote to Mary, she was more honest, although she feared that these letters too, would be perused by unwelcome eyes. 

She tried to keep in her mind that there no act so base that her husband would not stoop to it.

Chillingly courteous as he might be among Society, in private she was ignored. Her husband kept his own suite, left it early, returning late at night. He had not, not yet, called upon her as a husband should call upon a wife. If he came to her rooms, it was in daytime, and he would remain only for long enough to ask if she had everything she required. She would tell him that she did. He would say if she lacked for anything, she need only ask Peach, or any other servant, and with that, he would leave. 

Every morning, a horde of pages entered the room with bouquets of white flowers. 

Every night, Serafina lay on her pillow and tried her hardest not to weep.

For all that, it was no relief when, one day, Forthenby entered her rooms with a careful, deceitful smile, and asked, if it was not too much trouble, whether he might ask his wife to play upon the pianoforte.
 
She noted the emphasis on wife. 

“I thought you had no taste for music, my Lord.”

“All the same, I would hear you play. Unless the effort is distasteful to you.”

“It is no effort, my Lord.” She put down the book she had been browsing, going over the pianoforte, and leafing through the pages of sheet music he had provided for her, the scores from the operas she had seen, the other pieces she had bought for herself. There was as much, or more, than her entire collection in her father’s house, for all they would only sojourn in Paris for another month. But so it was with everything: jewellery, gowns, pastries, embroideries and books. 

Such wasteful use of money. 

It was as though he kept her like some exotic monkey which he had no idea how to feed, bombarding her with temptations and treats of every kind in the hope that one would give her sustenance. 

All the music she had was the type of music she liked best – challenging, tempestuous, Romantic. It took her some time to find something simple that would allow her hands to move over the keys, her mind to be elsewhere, with Richard.

Or which would have done, had Forthenby not stood there, motionless, watching her. She could feel his gaze tickling the back of her neck. Again, she was observed, held up to scrutiny. But this was unlike her father’s malevolent watchfulness: it did not wait for her to trip and disgrace herself. There was something about it that did not ring true with the villainy which she had seen in him. She was vaguely aware of him, standing as if to attention. The distance between them was slightly more than propriety required. 

Since the chaste kiss which had sealed their union, he had seemed reluctant to come near her. Even the little attentions paid to her in public were done with a thin barrier of air between them. 

Had she offended him somehow? Embarrassed him with her unpolished, city-ish manners? 

Foolish to think it, foolish to care. Indeed, not only did she not care. Now she thought about it, she wished to know what she had done so that she might do it again.

Careful, part of her advised, you have sworn to spend the rest of your life with this man.         

“I have mentioned before, My Lord,” she said, “that I cannot play when I am being watched in silence.”

There was a pause and, just as she began to expect that he would not answer her, he said, “I have been given ample evidence that my conversation is distasteful to you.”

“Your company is distasteful to me, my Lord,” she said, before she could stop herself, her mind falling too easily in to its old, unguarded pattern, “but if you will inflict it upon me, then I am afraid that I must make conditions.”

“Have a care, wife of mine,” he said, but his tone was merely cold, and had no anger in it.

“Are you attempting to intimidate me, my Lord?” she stopped playing and turned to him. “Believe me, it is not so easily achieved.”

And there he stood, her husband, with a veritable explosion of lace and embroidery at every possible opportunity of clothing. There was nothing of the modern dandy about him – he garbed himself like a fop from the final years of the last century, all colours and ornament. Yet, for all that, he was well made – a light, composed stance, a straight spine, a face that was almost as pretty as a girl’s. Had she not known what sort of monster he was, she would no doubt have found him pleasing upon the eyes. 

As it was, she wanted to give him a shove and send his stupid, affected poise backwards into one of the large vases of the white roses which were placed at cloying frequency about the room. 

Or, she did, until he blinked, and it was as though a flicker of some power passed over his face. It was not that he moved, not even that his expression changed, but as though she had pushed past the aggravating entitlement of his surface and touched the cold bedrock of his self.

She shivered, and clenched her hands, opening them slowly.