3. Terraces
"But in Shanghai, you see," Sir Thomas continued at length, "they don't believe in grains!" He slapped his thigh at his joke about the Chinese stock market, perhaps to fill the silence in the absence of laughter from his helpless audience.
"It's a wonder you survived," Richard commented as he took Mary's arm, "but if you'll excuse us –"
"Now wait just a minute!" Dewar replied, his corpulent frame blocking their exit from the small hallway they had somehow managed to get trapped in. "You haven't heard the best part."
Mary could not help her eyes from widening slightly in exasperation; in retrospect, she hoped Dewar would not mistake this for interest. "There I was," he kept going, "sick as a dog, when –"
"You resolved to not drink your own swill ever again," said Lord Ashby as he joined their gathering, though Mary thought of it more as heroically throwing himself on the fire. They all laughed exceptionally at this comment, and Sir Thomas looked most dissatisfied with the shifting spotlight. "But that's what happens when you try to sell the stuff we would not dare drink in England to the colonies, isn't it Thomas?" he asked with a hearty slap to the other man's back. The barb was so good-natured, Dewar could hardly take issue with it; at the same time, the thinly veiled insult was enough to render him temporarily speechless. Lady Ashby seized the opportunity to launch into her own story about Shanghai, which she intentionally made as boring and unfocused as possible.
"...And they have the most adorable little leashes in this red leather - well, was it leather? It's a kind of patent, I suppose, though it looks as shiny as those red lacquer boxes they make. Oh, I found the most delicious lacquer boxes in the night market, all stacked on top of one another in this tremendous pile - but where was I? I do lose track... The dogs! Well to make a long story short -"
No longer the center of wearied attention, Dewar drifted off to fascinate another group with his tales of adventure; Talitha cut off her meaningless anecdote mid-sentence as soon as he was out of earshot. They all tittered softly at their conspiracy to drive the man away.
"Did you read his book?" asked Lord Ashby after proper greetings had been exchanged at late his arrival. He was a heavy-set man, and older, yet he seemed jovial enough from the times Mary had met him. His middling appearance seemed hardly worth commenting on, he was so average a person; but then, that was the point, for he made Talitha shine all the more.
"I have not had that pleasure," Mary replied, though she had indeed heard of Sir Thomas's travelogue of his promotional trip around the world, and felt this evening's preview was enough to dissuade her.
"Lucky you," Richard snorted. "He handed me a copy personally, explaining he published his travel journals because his friends wanted to know, quote, 'all about it.' So far, no one I've met has owned up to such a demand."
"It wasn't me," Ash said, holding his hands aloft in defense. "Though whatever careless person did say it has made the rest of us suffer unduly."
"Worse, he asks you about your favorite part," Richard said. "I just say 'India.'"
"You'd better not!" cried Talitha. "That's what I say!"
"Oh no. I say 'Bombay,'" replied John. "Do you think he's under the misimpression we are all spellbound at his perspective about the subcontinent? You know he told me he's going back next year."
"My God," said Richard. "A sequel."
"Let's not mention that word," Talitha said in horror, "I can't think of anything worse." They all took a sip of whiskey at the same time, the prospect of having to read yet another Sir Thomas memoir requiring nothing less.
"Worse than this party, you mean?" John asked, taking another long drink to emphasize his point. Around them, people stayed clumped in the same groups they arrived, and none of the revelers seemed to be having a very great time. "At least the whiskey works," he added ruefully.
"If you're trying to win Mary over," Talitha said to Richard after appraising the room herself, "I don't think a Dewar party is the ideal venue." As she talked, a joylessly drunken man hurtled past their little gathering in the direction of the bar. "Unless of course your goal is to highlight how pathetic the bachelor apartment life can be and how desperately you need her rescue."
Richard grinned almost sheepishly. "Dewar may be beyond help, but I hope I'm not," he said, looking at Mary with affectionate amusement, before returning his gaze to Talitha. "Actually, Lady Mary told me she has never known anyone who lived in an apartment before, so I wanted to give her a preview of life in the twentieth century."
"If this is anything to go by, I'm beginning to prefer the nineteenth," Mary replied.
"You mean you haven't seen his flat?" Talitha asked with an incredulous shake of her head, a strand of blond hair detaching from her coif and landing in her eyes in a delightfully careless manner. "Richard you must show us immediately. Mr. Hoffmann did the most wonderful job."
"Josef Hoffman, the architect," Richard explained to her. "A friend from a brief spell in Austria."
"And so modern," commented Lord Ashby, "I don't know how you stand it."
"I suspect the world is tilting more in Richard's direction than yours," Mary said, "and we'll all have to get used to a little modernity." Richard looked unduly pleased at her remark, and relented to take them down the hall to show off his modern version of a palace. Mary admitted she was quite happy with the arrangement; after seeing Sir Thomas's living arrangements she was beside herself with curiosity as to her future fiancé's quarters, and the presence of the Ashbys as chaperones was the perfect way to investigate.
They wandered out the front door, the noisy chatter and laughter fading as they got further down the long and sparsely populated hallway. Richard lived at the other end of the building, in flat number one – of course, Mary said to herself – though there seemed to be no other doors between those clustered on Dewar's side and Richard's, and she wondered just how many flats there were in total.
As Richard turned the key in the lock, she noticed that the black wooden double doors were the same as Dewar's apartment. But as soon as the door was opened, she saw the exterior was where the similarities ended.
Upon entering, Mary found herself absorbed in a different world that had nothing to do with gauche whiskey barons or dizzying marquees. The muted greys, the careful geometry, the soft carpet, the glimmer of gold – it was all-enveloping. Once inside, it was difficult to imagine anything outside; the room instantly incorporated its visitors and made them feel at home.
That was most startling to Mary: she felt at home. It was nothing like what she was used to, but somehow it seemed exactly where she should be. In the first minute she could already envision herself sprawling on the sofa, floating across the floor. True, it was not in the style she would have selected, but in a way that was what made it all the more alluring.
The color palette, for example. Grey had never been Mary's favorite, but the entire room was fuming with it like the many different trails of smoke in a cigar lounge, and she was fascinated by how the endless shades and textures of this usually dull hue joined together to create a single atmosphere. There was velvet and linen, wool and silk, all in the most indulgent sable tones and offset by black and white. How perfect, she realized: black and white and gray, just like a newspaper. And sprinkled everywhere were shocks of gold, which she likened to the glint in Richard's eye at that very moment as he ignored their surroundings and looked only at her with a barely-contained fascination at her reaction.
"Isn't it spectacular?" Talitha asked as she pointed out several details across the room and floated to the terrace doors. "I've hired Mr. Hoffmann for Ash's office, and we couldn't be more thrilled."
"We? Don't you mean you?" Lord Ashby countered, his bushy eyebrows creeping up his forehead. "She spends five minutes in my office and decides it is utterly unsuitable," he told Mary with a wink.
"Come see the view!" Talitha called as she walked to the terrace doors. Richard, who had been oddly quiet, let his hand come to rest on Mary's back and gestured for her walk ahead. He seemed stiff, not at all relaxed as he had been earlier when they joked and bantered at the party. It was like his home turf had somehow brought her the advantage.
"We have trees," Ash said to Richard as he looked over the stone railing to the Thames and St. Paul's and Westminster and the lights of the distant South Bank, "but you have London." Here on the back side of the hotel, the flashing billboards of the Strand were not visible and the traffic could not be heard. It was almost peaceful.
"The lights in the distance are a nice touch," Mary agreed, the brisk early spring breeze brushing her face and the nighttime and distance blurring the grit and grime of London. "Almost like the stars one can see in the country sky."
"So you see," Richard said finally, "not all bad." Mary could not fully see his face in the half-light, but his tone made her heart beat a little faster; he so obviously cared what she thought.
They stood admiring the city for a moment, the sparkling lights of night covering a multitude of unpleasant daytime vistas, before Talitha interrupted the silence. "Well that's new," she observed, indicating a part of the terrace extending beyond the living room to the corner of the building. "When did you decide to landscape?" she asked.
The paving stones ended with steps down into the spacious sunken corner, a secret garden in the sky where ferns and various bushes bordered a square patch of… lawn. "Just recently," Richard replied. "Someone told me that stone terraces can't compare to grass."
Mary bit her lip to contain the smile that threatened to take over her neutral expression. She was so used to being listened to, yet so unaccustomed to being heard. But Richard heard to her. He remembered what she said because it meant something to him; not only that, he acted on the proclamations she had not even realized she made.
"I hardly see the point all the way up on the fourteenth floor," Lady Ashby said with a dismissive shake of her head. "Come, John, I'm going to show you the exact bookcases I plan to install. That is if Richard doesn't mind us copying him."
"I doubt he could stop you if he wanted to," John called out as he followed her back inside.
Mary walked down to the second terrace and stooped to run her hand over the grass, as if she was unsure if it was real or not. Their conversation had been only a week before, but in that short amount of time Richard had found someone to work out the mechanics of growing a miniature country garden on a penthouse roof in the middle of London. She could scarcely believe it, but the cool blades that prickled against her fingers and the slight dew that caught on her hands was irrefutable proof. She brushed off the moisture on her gown, murmuring, "I can't believe you can have this up here."
"That's what the gardeners said. But it's been done in New York, on rooftops higher than this," Richard said as he sat down on one of the flagstone steps at the edge of the lawn, indicating for her to join him. She sat beside him and looked ahead, the city stretched out before them, the distant lights bathing them in a faint yellow glow and sparkling off the intricate beadwork of her dress.
"It's almost vertiginous," Mary commented at the view from such a height.
"I prefer it," Richard said. "Better to be looking down on the city than the city looking down on me."
"In the country, there's nothing but trees and birds to look down on you," she said lightly, though she was strangely keen to convince him of the merits of her lifestyle as he was to convince her of his.
"And plenty of Crawleys," he teased, the lines of his eyes crinkling in jest.
"Only most Crawleys," she allowed with a smile of her own.
"There's only one whose opinion I care about." Their arms were touching and he ran his hand down the length of her evening glove; she could not contain a shudder and hoped he attributed it to the slight chill in the air. "So what do you think?" he asked as his hand cradled her wrist, his thumb running over the delicate bone. "Could you call an apartment home?"
She hesitated slightly, looking out across the city and deciding exactly what tack to take. "That depends entirely on the other occupant," she said finally. "If he happens to be a whiskey distiller, I think not."
Richard laughed at this; she liked it when she made him laugh. It was a good-natured laugh, free of the mocking tones he sometimes employed when they were discussing the failings of others, as they often did. "And a newspaper man?"
"That's a different story," she allowed, not quite able to admit that at that moment, she could easily call this place – and him – home.
He looked at her intently in the dim light, before seemingly deciding to press on. "Can I take that as an answer to my question?" he asked, and he was not referring to her opinion of apartments. They both knew what this evening was really about, and Mary had been deliberately vague, but he was always direct when she was at her most evasive.
So she took a deep breath, the scent of the fresh grass filling her lungs and driving out the fumes of the city, and resolved that the time for evasion was over. "Yes, you can."
It felt good to say aloud, at last, after she had kept him waiting for months; after she had put her own life on hold, struggling to own up to the decision. It felt good to sit so close to him. And it felt good to know he wished them to be even closer, she thought to herself as he tugged her wrist gently to draw her to him. So she let herself rest her head on his shoulder, despite the boldness of the move, and looked out at the city with a surprising sense of relief, certain that the flickering lights in the distance were just a painted backdrop installed exclusively for them, placed there to foster the illusion that anything was possible. "Anyone who can grow grass on the roof is ingenious enough to win my heart," she added.
"In that case," Richard answered as he placed a kiss on her hair, "you may find yourself walking down the aisle with the gardener."
She had been hopeful then; yes, hopeful was the right word. About Richard, about London. It all seemed like an adventure. Maybe not one she would have designed for herself, but now that it was presented to her, the path was alluring and new. That was before the realities of war intruded on her life, before the possibility of Matthew being gone forever was an actual threat, before Haxby and scandal and blackmail and the rest.
She had been happy, sitting next to her newspaperman on that roof so long ago, the chaperones off examining the construction methods of bookcases and Richard kissing her, properly, for the first time, in the dark. They had been happy. And now, standing in the hallway of her new home in the middle of the night, watching the same lights still flickering away in the distance, Mary knew they could be again.