“The night we met,” you say, then add, “at the St. Regis”—as if I need reminding—“we talked about books, about Hemingway and Dickens and the Bront?s, and you never once let on that you wrote.”
“Because I don’t.” My tone is too emphatic, too defensive. I soften it. “It was just one of those childish fantasies you grow out of. You know how it is. You’re suddenly passionate about something, so passionate that for a while it consumes you; then something happens and it’s over.”
“What happened?”
I squirm a little, uncomfortable with the memory. But you’re watching me so carefully, so completely. “Mrs. Cavanaugh,” I answer finally. “She confiscated one of my notebooks and showed it to my father. It was . . . I was in my Sappho phase at the time. The blushing apple, ungotten, ungathered. I had no idea what any of it meant, and I didn’t care. It was about the words, the rhythm of them, the ache they conveyed. I longed to re-create them somehow, in my own words, so I began experimenting, trying to emulate that beautiful lyricism. My father was appalled by what I’d written. Smut, he called it. He made me hand over all my notebooks, then made me watch as he ripped out the pages and tore them to shreds. I was forbidden to even read poetry. For a while, I kept a journal under my bed and continued to scribble, but my sister found it and squealed. That was the end of my poetry career.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. Fifteen, maybe.”
“And you haven’t written since?”
“No.”
“But you could. Now, I mean.”
I shrug, shift my eyes from yours. “There’s no point.”
“Beyond having something to say, you mean?”
“But I don’t.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m not like you,” I say flatly, because you might as well know it now, before this strange unraveling of my inner self goes too far. “I have no depth. No . . . substance, I guess you’d call it. Unless you count a trust fund as substance. I’m not the sort to sail around the world and chase dreams or thumb my nose at convention like your friend Goldie. I thought I was once, but I was quickly disabused of the notion. I’m exactly what you thought me when you asked me about the horses—the spoiled daughter of a very rich man who’s used to getting everything she wants.”
“And the price of everything is obedience?”
I hold your gaze, braving those eyes that seem to see through me. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t. We all make our choices. Business. Politics. Marriage to someone we’ll never be happy with. It’s called compromise.”
“Is that what you’re doing with Goldie?” I say, wanting desperately to turn the tables. “Compromising?”
You sigh. “Goldie again. All right. What do you want to know?”
“Are the two of you . . .”
“Lovers?” you supply. “No need to be shy. I’m happy to share all the juicy details, only brace yourself. It’s rather lurid.”
I sit very still, determined not to let you shock me.
“The truth is, my relationship with Goldie is . . .” You pause, scrubbing a hand across your chin. “How do I put this delicately? Financial in nature.”
My eyes widen despite myself. “You’re taking money from her? For . . . No.” I hold up a hand. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“My, my, my. You do have a naughty mind, don’t you?”
“Me? You’re the one—”
You grin, as if I’ve said something terribly funny. “She’s adding a magazine to her list of publications and she’s offered me a spot as a writer. Slice-of-life stuff. The odd social piece. Not exactly Hemingway but it’ll pay the bills until something better comes along. And I’ll get to rub elbows with American toffs like you. Who knows, I might even get a paid trip or two out of it.”
“And what about the novel you talked about publishing one day? When does that happen?”
It’s your turn to look away. “That dream’s a ways off, I’m afraid.”
“No time?”
“No pulse.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
“It means there’s no blood going to it. So until I figure out how to resuscitate it . . .”
“You’ll write slice-of-life pieces and escort your boss to social functions?”
“In the interest of full disclosure, I’m staying at Goldie’s until I find my own flat. Separate rooms.”
I eye you skeptically.
“I haven’t slept with her,” you say firmly. “Nor do I plan to sleep with her.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not sure anyone ever plans to sleep with her. She’s like a big blonde spider.”
“Do I detect a note of jealousy?”
“Jealousy?” I hurl you a chilly look. “I’m engaged to one of the most eligible men in New York.”
You slide off your stool and wander toward the open doors with your hands in your pockets, looking out over the rain-soaked stable yard. “Before, when I talked about marrying someone you’d never be happy with, I was talking about Teddy. Shall I tell you why?”
“I’m not interested in what you think of my fiancé.”
“Are you afraid of what I’ll say? Afraid I might be right?”
“I’m not afraid of anything you could say to me.”
“Aren’t you?”
Before I know it, you’re standing in front of me again. I stiffen, unnerved by your sudden closeness. I need to put space between us, but short of ducking under your arm and out into the rain, there’s nowhere to go. Instead, I tip back my head and meet those cool, clear eyes. “No.”
“Not even if I said I want to kiss you?”
You don’t wait for permission, but I give it as your lips close over mine, and it strikes me, as my body sways against yours, that this has always been where you and I were going. That the quiet fire that reared its head the first time I saw you would rush up one day and catch me unaware. That given the chance, it would consume me. And that I would let it.
This is what it’s supposed to be like, I think as our breaths mingle and my bones begin to melt.
This. This. This.
Regretting Belle
（pgs. 30–39）
5 September 1941
Water Mill, New York
There are a hundred reasons not to kiss you, a thousand, a million, but I can’t think of any of them as your eyes touch mine. Your mouth is there for the taking, your breath coming shallow, a tiny pulse ticking at the base of your throat, frenetic, like a bird’s.
I expect you to pull away and half hope that you will, to spare us both the mess we’re about to make. Instead, you yield with a completeness so breathtaking, I’m not sure which of us is the giver and which the taker. I’m lost in the feel and taste of you, the need for you that I’ve been trying to talk myself out of from the first moment I saw you. The fact of it—of this thing that’s been done and can now never be undone—guts me as our mouths continue to explore. Finding. Taking. Yielding.