Improper Arrangements (The Improper Series) Read online

  “Of course. I’ll wait here.”

  I scurried into the bedroom, hideously aware of the semen dripping down my thigh and the general disarray of my person. As my bags were still in the sitting room with Eli, I was forced to wipe myself dry with my drawers, which I removed and crumpled into a ball; I would deal with them later. It took but a moment more to fasten my bodice and jacket and smooth out my skirts. My hair I abandoned as a lost cause.

  I opened the door to the sitting room, half hoping that he had already left and spared us the awkwardness of this conversation. But he was there still, his expression grave and not a little troubled.

  “I’m not sure what to say,” I began, determined to at least be honest with him. “I’ve never done anything like this.”

  “As you said earlier,” he answered.

  “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to go?”

  “If that is what you wish.”

  “I do. I mean, I think it’s for the best if you do. I don’t know you, after all, and this...this was a mistake.”

  “Then I’ll go.”

  “I am terribly sorry if I—”

  “Don’t apologize,” he said. To my everlasting relief he sounded sincere, and not in the least aggrieved.

  “Thank you again for your help with my things,” I added awkwardly, wishing I had something better to offer by way of farewell.

  I stood back as he approached the door, opened it wide and paused at the threshold.

  He turned his head to look at me one last time. A flicker of some emotion, too elusive to identify, moved across his face, then was gone.

  “Goodbye, Alice.”

  Chapter Three

  As soon as the door had clicked shut behind him, I went to the window and forced myself to admire the entrancing view. Oceans of sky so blue it nearly hurt my eyes, a few stray clouds scudding by, and above all the inescapable mass of the mountains, so near and yet so remote, their upper slopes heavy with snow even in high summer.

  It seemed impossible that men had stood atop those peaks to stare down at the world below. Had Eli climbed them? I wished, suddenly, that I had asked.

  It was done. Over. I need never think of him again, nor dwell on how foolish I had been. And I had been foolish. I knew nothing of him, not even his surname. He could have been anything, anyone—a vagabond, a brute, a madman—and I was vulnerable, a woman traveling alone in a foreign country.

  I was twenty-six years old and had endeavored, ever since the sobering mistakes I had made eight years ago, to be the very model of rectitude and sensible, level-headed behavior. All gone in a matter of minutes.

  “Enough,” I said to the empty room and the echoing mountains beyond. What was done was done. I had made a mistake, but it need not lead to catastrophe. No one knew, apart from Eli, and he didn’t seem the sort of man to gossip. Assuming he hadn’t left any of his seed in me, I should be safe from pregnancy.

  Now I simply had to forget. That was the solution. I had to busy myself, do something, else find myself wallowing in doubt and recrimination.

  I would paint.

  I’d been traveling almost nonstop for the past week, and while I’d been able to make rough sketches of the sights I’d seen, I hadn’t yet had the chance to capture the colors and details of the views that had affected me most deeply.

  It was the work of seconds to set up my little traveler’s easel on the table in front of the window, affix to it a half sheet of pristine Arches paper, open my tin of watercolors and unroll my bundle of brushes. I borrowed a cup of water from the nearby flower arrangement, there being no other ready source in my rooms, and opened my sketchbook.

  I leafed through the drawings I’d done—Lake Geneva at dawn, placid cows grazing in their summer pastures, the mottled amethyst petals of a Dactylorhiza alpestris—but none inspired me.

  I wanted to paint Eli. Never mind that a heartbeat ago I’d resolved to forget him. Never mind that fixing his face in my memory was pure, unalloyed folly.

  I took up a pencil, sharpened it on a scrap of sandpaper and set the first line on the paper. It was the arch of his brow, always my favorite place to begin when drawing a person’s face. Another sweep of the pencil and I had his nose, including the crooked bit just below the bridge. A flurry of short, soft strokes, and I had his eyes. The rest of his face followed, little more than brief lines that suggested the curve of his lips, the shadow of his beard and the fall of his dark, waving hair.

  A sketch alone wasn’t enough—I needed to capture the almost otherworldly color of his eyes before my memory of them faded and blurred. While I might never look at this drawing again, I had to see those eyes one last time.

  I dipped my sponge into the cup of water I’d purloined from the flower arrangement and dampened the paper just enough to let the pigments settle in. I dabbed a dot of cobalt blue on my palette, a smaller dot of vermilion, a drop of water to lighten the resulting gray, and let the shades flow together. Allowing only the tip of my favorite squirrel-hair brush to touch the color, I let it wash over the irises, scarcely darkening them, letting the pigment work with the stark white of the paper to produce the shade I sought. I dried the brush, touched it to the gray on the palette, let it linger on the paper a further half second, just to capture the ring of color that banded his irises. Then I filled in the pupils, dark and intense.

  I pulled back and examined what I had wrought with a critical eye. The contrast was right, but it wanted some blue. The merest hint of French ultramarine, laid wet on top of the near-black, was all it needed. And there...done. Eli’s face, his eyes, as near as I could fashion them.

  Less than an hour before, I’d been in his arms, so close I could hear his every breath. He had made me feel things I had never expected to feel, had led me to delights that I’d long assumed were the province of fables and no more.

  And I had let him go. I had let him walk away without discovering his surname or asking for his direction. I hadn’t even thanked him—had, instead, banished him like a thief caught skulking in the corridor.

  It was for the best. It was truly for the best. Why else had he agreed so readily to leave? He must have felt, too, that I was right.

  I set the drawing on the far side of the desk, taking care to weigh down its corners. The rest of my supplies I tidied away, rinsing my brush in the remaining water and drying it thoroughly on an old handkerchief I kept in my supplies case for just that purpose.

  The clock on the bedroom mantel chimed noon. Half the day was gone already, and I’d entirely forgotten about the pressing issue of a guide for the next stage of my journey. If I wished to receive prompt answers from the men I had come here to interview, I needed to send off messages to them now.

  Armed with the list my brother had given me, I sat at the desk again. Tom no longer had the time for much climbing, but he was a longtime member of the Alpine Club and a reliable source of information on anything to do with mountaineering.

  I took a sheet of hotel stationery and began copying out the message I planned to send to all five guides on my brother’s list, beginning with Arthur P. Warburton.

  Monday, 6 August, 1866

  Dear Mr. Warburton,

  I arrived today in Argentière with the intention of traveling on to Zermatt via the High-Level Route. My brother, Thomas Cathcart-Ross, has recommended you as a guide for the journey. I would be most grateful if you could let me know if you are at liberty to accompany me and, if so, when you might be available to discuss provisioning, remuneration, etcetera.

  Yours very truly,

  Alice Cathcart-Ross

  I next wrote out identical messages to Tomas Mueller, Anders Rossi, E. P. Keating and Jean-Marie Valent. All five men lived in Argentière or La Rosière, a smaller village just to the south, so with any luck I might expect to hear back from one or more of them as early as tomorrow.

  After ringing the bellpull, I handed my envelopes to the footman when he arrived at my door. I also asked him to send up some food, and to
my relief it was delivered a scant quarter hour later. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I uncovered the dishes: cream of carrot soup, warm rolls with fresh butter, poached trout with parsley sauce and, for pudding, fresh raspberries with a little pitcher of cream.

  I was yawning as I finished off the berries, huge, jaw-cracking yawns that brought tears to my eyes and made my every gesture feel as if lead weights were hanging from my limbs. Evidently a short rest was in order.

  Wearing only my chemise, drawers and stockings, I climbed into bed, shivering a little when the cool linen sheets brushed against my skin. My mind was cluttered with unwanted images, sensations, even sounds. The tickle of Eli’s fingers as they traced the curve of my face. His tongue in my mouth. His growl of pleasure when I responded in kind. The weight and heat of his cock inside me.

  What had occurred between us earlier had been a mistake, pure and simple.

  If only I could believe it.

  * * *

  The sound of a sharp knock woke me from a deep and dreamless sleep. I lay still, waiting, but it wasn’t repeated. I slipped out of bed and went to the door of my bedchamber. All was silent. How odd, I thought, and then I saw an envelope on the floor in front of the door to the corridor. Presumably the servant who had delivered it had also knocked to alert me.

  It was addressed to me, the writing in an unfamiliar hand. A man’s writing, by the look of it. I tore open the envelope and read the note inside.

  Received your message. Am available today from five o’clock onward.

  E.P. Keating

  I glanced at the clock on the mantel: it was half past two already. I dashed off a reply to Mr. Keating, nearly as brief as his own, asking him to meet me in the hotel’s conservatory at five o’clock for tea. With that accomplished, I dressed and rang for a footman.

  As before, he arrived at my suite in record time and promised to deliver my message to Mr. Keating straight away. Before he left, I asked that a lady’s maid be sent to me. I was keen to make a good impression on the renowned E. P. Keating, and for that I would need some assistance.

  Of all the guides my brother had recommended, Mr. Keating was the only one I’d heard of before, for his fame far exceeded the rarefied world of mountaineering. I’d read an account of his early life not long ago, in one of the London newspapers, and had been thoroughly awed by his achievements.

  A younger son of minor gentry, he’d grown up in the wilds of Derbyshire, had taken a double first in mathematics at Cambridge and, aged all of twenty, had embarked on the first of many voyages. He’d traveled the world, had been to the Holy Land and Arabia and Hindustan, and had ventured deep into the high mountains of the Himalaya.

  That alone would have been enough for most men, but then—inspired, I supposed, by the mountains he had seen abroad—he’d returned to Europe and had become an alpinist.

  He’d conquered every notable peak in the Alps, including the Eiger, the Jungfrau and Mont Blanc’s Grandes Jorasses. Not only had he climbed, walked and skied every slope, but he’d also pioneered new techniques, new approaches and new ways of thinking about mountains and men.

  And he’d written about it all, first in a series of articles in the Alpine Journal, and then, as interest in his exploits grew, he’d published an honest, engaging and entirely captivating account of his most famous climbs. My own dog-eared copy of Between Earth and Sky was in my trunk even now, for I planned to read his descriptions of these mountains as I walked their lower slopes.

  Although Tom had recommended him as a potential guide, he’d also warned me that Mr. Keating might be unable to oblige. Less than a year ago, while descending from the summit of the Aiguille d’Argentière, he and his closest friend had fallen hundreds of feet after the rope securing them had snapped. Peter Davies had been killed, and Mr. Keating had been badly injured. Tom had no idea if Mr. Keating was even able to walk, let alone undertake a lengthy journey along the High-Level Route.

  Still, he had said he would meet with me, and that was a start. Even if he couldn’t guide me, he would likely know of someone else who might.

  An hour later, a scratch at the door heralded the arrival of one of the hotel’s maids, together with my remaining luggage. I wouldn’t have to meet Mr. Keating in my travel-worn gown after all.

  Agnès had an excellent command of English, and in short order she unpacked my trunk, divested me of my rumpled clothes and prosaic undergarments, and had me securely laced into the one good satin-covered corset I’d brought with me. Traveling on my own, I’d grown used to loosened laces, for there was no one available to tighten them after I’d fastened my corset busk. It soon became evident that Agnès disapproved strongly of such laxity on my part.

  Feeling breathless and not at all certain that I’d be able to manage anything more than a sip of tea, I sat meekly at the dressing table while she arranged my hair and set a crescent of silk flowers just above the plaited oval of my chignon. Then it was time for my new afternoon gown, one of several I’d purchased while in Paris earlier in the summer. It was made of aquamarine silk taffeta trimmed with Alençon lace, it was prettier than anything I’d ever owned, and it had been shockingly expensive.

  As I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I decided it was worth every single franc. In my ordinary day dresses, I was plain. Short and slight, I had no bosom to speak of, and my hips were unfashionably narrow. My complexion was even but had no color to it, and my hair was similarly insipid. Not dark enough to be brown, nor fair enough to be blond, it was an indeterminate shade of nothing. My eyes were a pleasant shade of hazel, but rather spoiled by too-dark brows.

  The new gown had wrought nothing less than miracles with my appearance. Its pale blue-green silk made my hair shine, and my usually dull complexion had become radiant. And my bosom—I stared and stared. Where had it come from? I’d always assumed I had no curves, but this gown proved me wrong.

  “You look very nice, madame.”

  “Thank you, Agnès. I believe I do.”

  Chapter Four

  I was looking out of the conservatory’s tall windows, transfixed by the late afternoon sun as it descended toward the snow-draped towers of the Mont Blanc massif, when a tug of awareness drew my attention back inside.

  A man stood at the room’s threshold, his back to me. He was speaking with the waiter, who nodded and gestured in the direction of my table. Assuming that my guest had arrived, I sat up very straight and smoothed my skirts over my lap.

  Then he turned his head, and I saw it wasn’t Mr. Keating after all.

  It was Eli.

  A very angry Eli. Even at a distance, I could see how his eyes were narrowed, how tightly his lips were pressed together. Of all the cursed luck that he would decide to seek me out now, and in such a public place. Surely he didn’t intend to embarrass me. Yet why else should he have returned without any further encouragement on my part?

  He began to make his way toward me, the look in his eyes chill and assessing and more than a little frightening. There was something quite singular about the way he moved, as if he’d swiftly calculated the optimal route from the room’s entrance to my table and was disinclined to expend any more than the minimal amount of time and effort to reach his objective.

  As he walked through the room, heads turned to follow his progress. He was the sort of man who must attract attention wherever he went, and all the more so now that he was finely dressed. His hair was still long, though neatly combed, and he’d shaved off his beard. He looked younger without it, I thought. But no less dangerous.

  At last he stood before me and I realized, too late, that I’d been staring avidly at him the entire time.

  “Hello, Lady Alice.” He tossed an envelope on the table—the very letter I’d sent to Mr. Keating earlier in the day.

  “I don’t understand...”

  “Elijah Philemon Keating, at your service. But of course you knew that already.”

  I would have gasped, but my wretched corset was laced too tightly. “
You are Mr. Keating?”

  “None other.”

  “But you introduced yourself as Eli.”

  “Short for Elijah, Lady Alice. May I sit?”

  Without waiting for my response, he pulled out the chair opposite mine and sat in it heavily. “Cat got your tongue?”

  “I...I must apologize, Mr. Keating. I simply hadn’t made the connection.”

  He laughed, and it was a harsh sound with no trace of good humor. “You honestly expect me to believe that? How many English mountaineers with my Christian name are likely to be found in a village of this size?”

  Put like that, it did seem ludicrous that I hadn’t realized they were one and the same. Not that I would admit as much to him. “I assure you I never thought about it. I know you as E. P. Keating—that’s your name as it appears in your book, and in all your journal articles.”

  He leaned back in his chair, his arms folded, and assessed me coolly, almost clinically. I might as well have been an insect with a pin through its midsection. I certainly felt as uncomfortable.

  Just then our waiter arrived at the table. He was clearly delighted to see Mr. Keating, who stood to greet him. They spoke together for some time in a language that was neither French nor German, but somehow still evocative of both.

  I waited for Mr. Keating to turn around and acknowledge me in some way, at the very least to discover what I wished to order for tea, but I had apparently become invisible. Eventually he sat down again, his smile evaporating as he remembered my presence.

  “How do you know the waiter?” I asked, determined to be civil.

  “We climbed Piz Bernina four years ago. Conditions were so bad I wasn’t sure we’d make it down in one piece.”

  “Isn’t that somewhere in Switzerland?”