Black Silk by Judith Ivory Page B

companionably with tourism, residing in the upstairs rear of the house in the private quarters entered through the carriage foyer. It was ample. No one disturbed him. He had become comfortable with the fact that his steps were heard overhead, explained and interpreted by some historian below. “Now, that is the present earl….”
    The present earl yanked off his trousers and stepped into a tubful of hot water, blissfully lauding to himself the miracles of modern plumbing. His secretary managed to slip upstairs with paper and pen a few minutes after that. Submerged in three feet of water and with a fat cigar between his teeth, Graham puffed out a severe letter on profligate spending to his daughter, then instructed that a ten-pound note be included with the letter. He knew that lecturing Claire, then giving her money, was contradictory, but he didn’t know how else to handle the girl or, for that matter, her brother.
    He knew he was not the model father. He was hardly a father at all, in fact. He had a tendency to forget thechildren—a thought that gave him pause. Frowning and watching smoke rings drift over the tub and wisp to nothing, he tried to remember if he’d mentioned them yet to Rosalyn.
    He’d better do so soon. Such large things began to seem like secrets when they went too long unspoken. Rosalyn was already up in arms that he had a widowed cousin who could track him down at a party. Why hadn’t he told her he had such a cousin? she had wanted to know this morning.
    “I didn’t know myself.”
    “What were you talking to her about at the end of the terrace?”
    He’d rolled his eyes, amazed that she would pay attention to this. “Are you jealous?”
    “Should I be?”
    He expelled a quick breath, having to feign exasperation. “For God’s sake, Rosalyn, she’s a pale little thing with frizzy hair and crooked teeth.”
    Luckily, lightning didn’t strike a man down for lying with fragments of reassembled truth.
    The pale, frizzy, little crooked-toothed woman aroused a mild but persistent curiosity in Graham. She interested him—an interest he was in no hurry to share with Rosalyn. He couldn’t have explained to her or anyone else why he was intrigued by the widow. She wasn’t very pretty. She wasn’t even very nice. Perhaps it was having the secret of dirty pictures between them. Or all those mounds of swaying, slithering black silk. The steel hoops under that silk had to be so thin, an expensive undergarment bought by Henry, he reminded himself. Her skirts jiggled and shuddered at the slightest movement she made. Graham dropped her into a category, hoping this would sum her up and sort her out—she was what the French would call une beauté mystique . A woman with no obvious beauty who managed by some quirk of personality to be mysteriously appealing allthe same. Take away that smug air, those fancy hoops and full skirts, and what would you have?
    Graham was laughing at himself as he stepped out of the tub and picked up a large towel. He found his clothes laid out on the bed. He was fastening the bottom buttons of his vest when his valet came in carrying a handful of watches. As the man bent to thread a watch chain, Graham took the whole lot from him. “Thank you, John. I’ll take care of the rest myself. Go down and tell Royce to open up the shed, will you? Oh, and tell him to stay and mind it till I come down. You know how people are.”
    Graham moved to stand before a wide, lead-mullioned window twice as tall as himself. In this light, he set a watch that had stopped, then stood there winding it, absently looking out the window. His eyes fixed on a curious little scene taking place outside, three stories below him. A large family was posing among the statuary on his back lawn before a man with a gadget that was becoming more and more common. The man had his head bent down under a black cloth as he looked through a box on stick legs. A portable camera. There were men who took these around,