Chapter 21
My final evening aboard the Saint Paul, I was outside as always, pacing the decks as always because I couldn’t sleep. I hated to sleep.
I caught sight of George up ahead. He was walking away from me, but those were his broad shoulders, his brown hair. His familiar pace. It was him.
Oh, Marguerite. My heart leapt with such joy, such relief.
I can’t even describe to you that sensation of relief, except to say that it lit through me like a lightning bolt, my every living cell ablaze.
In that instant, I knew it was all a mistake.
The torpedo, the sinking. Of course, my God, how could George be dead, it wasn’t possible, what a nightmarish misunderstanding.
His body in the morgue, in the ground, no no. All these last few weeks, no no no.
It was all fine, everything was fine, because he was still alive.
I cried out his name from across the deck, breaking into a run. When the strange gentleman turned around, no doubt startled, I stumbled to a stop. Somehow, I managed to beg his pardon.
I returned to my stateroom and locked the door. I didn’t come out again until after we had docked.
JULY, 1915
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK
Inez came home to the heat, from a clement British summer to a muggy Manhattan summer, and the difference was extreme. Limp hair, laboring lungs.
It was curious how her apartment was so unchanged when everything else had changed.
An explosion, an earthquake of unfathomable proportions, had cratered her life, yet everything here was exactly as she had last seen it.
Nothing toppled over, nothing shattered.
No hint of the disaster that had occurred halfway around the world but still rippled on and on, like a tidal wave that only gained strength with distance, until it smashed into land.
She took a slow tour of the flat, remembering him in the chair by the fire, pulling her onto his lap. At the kitchen table, devouring the plate of madeleines she’d baked for him, his favorite dessert.
Their bedroom, that holy place.
The four-poster was dust-free; the duvet was perfectly smoothed and the pillows plumped.
In the marbled bathroom, she found his shaving kit by the sink.
His bottles of aftershave, his hairbrush and combs, all still in their neat lines.
She picked up the brush, pressed her palm against the stiff bristles, then set it down and drifted outside to the balcony.
One of the main reasons they’d agreed upon the flat (after viewing so many, weeks and weeks of searching for their New York home) was this balcony, enclosed and private, offering fine views of the city even past the urns of bougainvilleas they’d ended up installing.
Inez fingered their dusty pink leaves. The plants had been watered, but without either of the Vernons in residence, the housekeeper only came by once a week.
Clearly, it hadn’t been enough for the vines. The summer had scorched them dry.
Poor things, she thought. Poor dead things. Poor dead babies. Everything dead.
She glanced skyward. A lid of low, yellowish clouds did nothing to deflect the heat, so she went back inside to the shadows.
ON HER THIRD day home, Inez awoke alone in the bed.
She got up, made coffee (no fresh cream, so she drank it black, grimacing with every sip).
She rinsed the dishes in the sink, then went to her closet, rummaging through it until she found the ebony satin gown she’d never planned to wear beyond that one time onstage at the Met for her debut, it was so elegant and severe.
But George loved it on her. He loved it, said it suited her, showed the world who she really was, a tsarina in disguise.
She found her jewelry locked away in its heavy rosewood box. At first, she couldn’t quite recall where the key was, but then she did. George’s desk, in the hidden compartment cleverly concealed in the back.
Inez retrieved the key, fit it into the brass lock, and opened the box.
Such riches, really. Such beautiful, significant things. Her fingers skimmed the treasures inside, metalwork and gemstones and crisp facets that seized the light, dim as it was. She touched each piece, considering it, taking out only what she needed.
The diamond necklace he’d given her for their last anniversary.
The sapphire hair combs he’d given her for her last birthday.
The matched pair of rubied bangles he’d given her just because.
Just because I adore you, George had said, kneeling before her, smiling up at her. So much, Mrs. Vernon. I adore you so much.
I LOVE YOU, Inez wrote, the final words of the letter she’d been carefully composing over the past two days.
She studied it a moment, examining the clarity of her handwriting—yes, good enough—then folded the pages in half and wrote her sister’s name on the front.
She hesitated, and then beneath it added a scrawled, Don’t be angry.
Inez pushed back from her desk, leaving the letter where it was. In a slither of fine black satin, in a glitter of precious jewels, she returned to the closet and found the cardboard box stored way in the back, behind a stack of her husband’s folded winter sweaters.
She carried the box to their bed, opened the lid. She removed the pearl-handled pistol, balancing the heft of it in her hand.