Chapter 6 The Husbands Night #2
"There. That was honest." His voice softened. "How quickly she has acquired a place in your concern. Should I be jealous?"
"No."
"No, because there is nothing? Or no, because jealousy would give her more importance than she deserves?"
"No, because jealousy requires affection."
The answer left her before prudence could kill it. Jasper's face did not change at first. Then he laughed, very quietly.
"That was nearly brave. I admire nearly brave things. They show the shape of courage without yet requiring me to destroy it completely."
He reached for her hand. She let him take it because refusal would be a beginning, and beginnings were dangerous when there was no possible end she could control. His fingers closed around hers, not painfully yet, just firmly enough to remind her that pain was available.
"You believe hatred protects you," he said.
"It does not. Hatred keeps a woman warm, perhaps, if she has no better fire.
It gives her the illusion of an interior room no husband may enter.
But the body is less philosophical. The body obeys nearness, breath, pressure, heat, fear.
That is why marriage is such an elegant institution.
It cures women of the belief that their inward opinions are sovereign. "
"My inward opinions are the only things in this house that have remained mine."
"Then I have been negligent."
He lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist, exactly where an old bruise had begun to fade. His mouth was dry and warm. She felt revulsion before she felt fear. Revulsion had become, over the years, the more faithful emotion. Fear changed its clothing. Revulsion remained honest.
"Jasper," she said, keeping her voice even, "I am tired."
"I know. You play more beautifully tired. Your control becomes thin enough for feeling to show through."
"Do you want feeling?"
"From you? I want evidence that feeling exists and proof that it does not rule me." He released her wrist and touched the lace at her throat. "You wore black for dinner. Was that for me?"
"It was what my maid laid out."
"Agnes has a theatrical soul. Or perhaps Miss Brown's arrival has made you wish to look tragic. I dislike tragedy when it is performed by people who remain alive to receive sympathy."
His fingers moved to the tie of her wrapper. Helena caught his wrist. The gesture was small, but it was resistance. The room noticed. She could almost feel the walls lean closer.
For a moment, Jasper looked at her hand on him. Then he looked at her face.
"Remove it," he said.
She did not.
His voice remained soft. "Helena, I have tolerated wit tonight, and contradiction, and the little archivist's moral appetite. I have tolerated your failure at the piano because I wished to see who would be foolish enough to rescue you. Do not mistake tolerance for fatigue. Remove your hand."
She removed it.
He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "There is my wife."
From the dressing room, no sound came. Helena knew Agnes was listening to the silence, measuring it, suffering because of it. That knowledge helped and hurt in equal measure. She did not want to be alone. She did not want anyone to witness what loneliness had become.
Jasper untied the wrapper. He did not hurry.
Haste belonged to appetite. Jasper's cruelty preferred ritual.
He liked to make obedience feel formal, each small yielding given the dignity of a ceremony no one had consented to attend.
The wrapper slipped from Helena's shoulders and fell against the chair.
He looked at her as a collector looked at a binding he owned and knew could not leave his shelf.
"Beautiful," he said. "Do you know how irritating beauty becomes when joined to ingratitude?
A plain wife may at least excuse bitterness as disappointment.
You have been given silk, position, a name, a house in London, Dacre Court when we choose to remove there, jewels, carriages, servants, every protection a woman of your rank should require.
Yet you persist in looking at me as if I am the misfortune. "
"Protection from whom?"
His hand came up so quickly that she had no time to turn fully away.
He did not strike her face. Jasper rarely chose marks that society might read at a glance.
His fingers closed on the upper part of her arm, where the nightdress covered skin and where sleeves would hide the proof tomorrow.
The pressure was exact, increasing slowly until pain opened bright and contained beneath his hand.
"From yourself," he said. "From vulgarity. From scandal. From the consequences of being a woman with too much feeling and too little judgment. From women like Miss Brown, who will teach you to name your cage and then leave you in it when the naming becomes expensive."
Helena breathed through her nose. She would not cry out. She would not give him the pleasure of a sound. Pain was a language he trusted too much. Silence, though he also used it, could still keep one small chamber closed.
"You know nothing of her," she said.
"I know she is unmarried, competent, observant, and poor enough to need employment but proud enough to resent needing it.
I know she has ink on her fingers and righteous anger under her collar.
I know she looked at you tonight as if you were not merely my wife.
That is already too much knowledge for a stranger. "
"Then dismiss her."
The words cost more than she expected. Jasper heard the cost.
"Ah," he said. "There is strategy. You would rather lose her than let me use her. How touching. How premature."
"She is useful to the library. That is all."
"Useful to the library, yes. Useful to you, perhaps.
Useful to me, certainly, if she finds what I wish found and fails to understand what should remain beneath the dust." He loosened his grip suddenly, and the released pain spread worse than the pressure had.
"Do you know why I invited her to dinner? "
"To watch her."
"Partly. To watch you watching her. That was the greater pleasure."
Helena hated him then with such clarity that the room seemed almost clean.
Hatred did not save her, but it burned through confusion.
It told her that none of this was love distorted by marriage, none of it was temper, none of it was the ordinary unhappiness women were told to endure because homes required sacrifice.
Jasper enjoyed knowledge joined to helplessness.
He enjoyed knowing where fear lived and pressing there gently enough that the victim had to wonder whether anyone else would believe pressure could bruise.
He touched her hair, which Agnes had left loose. "You are thinking something severe. I can see it move behind your eyes."
"Would you like me to say it?"
"No. If women said everything they thought, men would be forced either to forgive too much or kill too often. Civilization depends upon your restraint."
"And marriage?"
"Marriage depends upon recognition." He leaned closer.
"You recognize that I may come here because I am your husband.
You recognize that the law names me before it names you.
You recognize that pity from a servant, anger from a cataloguer, or insolence from your own tongue cannot alter the room we stand in.
You may hate me beautifully if you wish.
I do not require love. Love makes women sentimental, and sentiment spoils discipline. "
He kissed her then, not brutally, not in the way a sensational account might have described.
The cruelty lay in the entitlement. He kissed her as if the absence of affection were irrelevant to the contract of her body.
Helena endured the pressure of his mouth by leaving herself in portions.
Her mind moved first to the curtains, then to the fire, then to the small crack in the painted ceiling, then to Constance Brown standing beside the piano and inventing a question out of courage because she had understood pain before anyone named it.
That memory was dangerous. She tried to push it away.
Jasper did not deserve to stand near it, not even in her thoughts.
He drew back. "There. You vanish better now. Earlier in our marriage you fought the disappearing and made everything vulgar. Age has improved you."
"You confuse age with practice."
"Practice is one of the few virtues women acquire reliably.
" His hand moved again to her arm, higher now, thumb placed where a sleeve would cover it.
"Tomorrow you will be gracious to Miss Brown.
Not warm. Warmth invites inquiry. Not cold.
Coldness invites drama. Gracious. If she asks about Lady Beatrice Dacre, you will have forgotten the rumor.
If she asks about the old family tree, you will direct her to Wroth.
If she asks about the volumes marked with red slips, you will tell her my father had sentimental habits and poor eyesight. "
"Why?"
The question surprised them both. It was small, but it had escaped.
Jasper's eyes sharpened. "Because I said so."
"No. Why Lady Beatrice? Why the red slips? Why invite a cataloguer if the catalogue is to be managed before it is made?"
His grip tightened. Pain entered before the answer did.
"Because even a managed catalogue must sometimes be made by clean hands.
Mine are too familiar to persuade certain people.
Wroth's are too legal. Marianne's too cold.
Roland's too dirty. Yours, my dear, are decorative.
Miss Brown's hands look honest. That is useful. "
"Useful for what?"
He smiled again, and this smile frightened her more than anger. "There she is. My spirited wife, asking questions in her nightdress. It would be charming if it were not inconvenient."