Sometimes ends are in fact beginnings; beginnings ends. Or that is how a few parties I have gone to fare, which is another reason I never travel without a varied wardrobe.
— MRS. L. A. M. BRECKINRIDGE, THE LAWS OF BEING IN WELL-MANNERED CIRCLES
DIANA WATCHED THE SKYLINE OF HAVANA DRAW away from her as though it were the coast of utopia, from which she had been banished forever. The baroque domes of the churches grew tiny and it began to settle in for her, rather darkly, that she would never again walk the arcades of the old town while the rain pelted the squares, or collect palm fronds in the hinterlands, or watch the sunrise over cobblestones after she had worked till dawn. Instead, it would be New York, a place she had left in the dead of night, where her lover’s wife waited armed with all the secrets of all the bad things Diana had ever done. Still, for all that, she couldn’t feel too sorry for herself. Henry was just behind her, his arms wrapped around so as to shield her from the wind up high on the hurricane deck.
Behind him stood two members of Colonel Copper’s brigade, charged with escorting the society girl back to her mother. There had been much haranguing and pleading that morning, but in the end the colonel had not budged from his position that he would be failing his country if he did not insist on Miss Holland’s leaving the foreign port of which he was, after all, among the most senior American military personnel. He had wanted Henry to remain in Cuba, but Henry had insisted that it would be improper for a girl not to have the protection of a family friend, who was after all a married man, on such a long sea voyage. And since the colonel’s argument had been for propriety all along, he had been forced to acquiesce.
Henry wore his complete uniform that day, with all the buttons done up. Diana would remember him that way for a long time, she thought — his handsome face in a serious composition, his dark eyes alive with emotion, his shoulders broad under the blue jacket. Neither of the banished pair had spoken much since they’d been discovered in bed that morning. The enormity of what lay before them was almost too much to address. Anyway, they had first grown infatuated with each other when Henry was still engaged to Diana’s older sister, though that seemed so long ago, and their love had never been the kind where communications were easily exchanged.
“I am sorry, my Diana,” Henry whispered into her hair, which blew up around her face. They had passed out of the bay by then, and the ocean, which was growing choppy, yawned infinite beyond the ship’s rail. “I ought to have been more careful.”
She pushed her head back, so that his lips pressed faintly against the crown, and stroked his hand with her fingers. There were no accurate words for what she was feeling, and the rocking of the boat had put a sick twist in her stomach.
“I always ought to have been more careful,” he went on, bending forward a little so that he could put the side of his face against the side of hers, and his lips against her cheek. “In Havana, in New York, after I was married, before. Especially before. If I had been more careful, I might not have been married at all.”
Diana smiled a little at the memory of the morning after they first slept together. It was the only time he had slept in her bedroom. She’d given up her girlhood to him the night before, an act she’d never once regretted. But her maid, Claire, had come in through the door and seen them — she must have told her sister, Lina, and from there it had gotten to Penelope, who’d threatened to inform all the staid people who were the Hollands’ supposed friends and relatives if Henry didn’t marry her. Diana’s ruination was the thing Penelope had traded to call herself Mrs. Schoonmaker; that was the bargain that had so effectively parted Di from the only man she’d ever loved.
“I was the one who was incautious,” Diana replied after a minute, and laughed a little.
“But I was the older, the more experienced one,” he persisted with a weary sigh. What he’d said was true, of course, but she couldn’t help but think — without quite knowing how to express it — that she was older now, too, and that she had in fact traveled more than Henry at this point in their lifetimes. She could perhaps outdrink him now, too. The bones of her back rested against his chest, and so she felt how hard he swallowed before he spoke again. His tone, when he did, had the ring of destiny. “I’ll never be so careless with you again.”
She inhaled sharply. “It feels more true than ever now, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” The sun would be gone from the sky soon, and for a while they watched the darkening sea smash up against the sides of the ship. They had rooms below — separate, of course — but neither wanted to go down under when the city where they had been so happily reconnected was even the slightest bit visible on the horizon. “It is truer. I can’t imagine what my life was before. I can’t imagine ever being without you for very long again.”
The unsteadiness of being high up over rough waters became, in the next moment, confused with the particular dizziness that was for her so closely associated with Henry’s attention when it was focused in her direction. She leaned against him for support and reminded herself to breathe. There was firm resolve in his voice, something new — there was power in it, and the beginning of a promise she had longed to hear for months.
“I can’t stand the idea of going back to how things were, not after we’ve been together like this. Diana…it’s you I always wanted. You I should call my wife.”
The nausea faded at the sound of the word wife. The crisp sea air, which filled her nose and chilled the edges of her ears, was like cool clarity. Her insides felt dusted with sugar, and she opened her round little mouth to whisper sweetly back at him. “Once upon a time you gave me a piece of jewelry with the inscription ‘For my true bride.’ I took that seriously, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
She turned away from the rail, twisting in his arms so that she could look up at the clean lines of his sun-touched face. The wind was harsh on his skin, and the outdoor light made slits of their eyes. “Anyway, it won’t feel the same, not after we’ve been together like this. Not after I found you, one soldier of thousands, in a foreign city. How could it?”
Henry shook his head and exhaled gloomily through his nostrils. “But there are so many difficulties.”
She half turned her face away from him, but held his dark gaze, and let her mouth curl up a little. She had never, even for an instant, seen Henry unsure of himself like that, unable to imagine how it would be for him, especially not over a girl, and one who’d known so little of love as she. It rather changed her world, for Henry was such a famous rake, and she was merely the second-best-loved of the Holland sisters.
“Henry…,” she whispered in her most caressing tone, as her hands reached for each other around his torso.
“Yes?”
“We neither of us can go back. Not to Havana, nor to the way things were before, not even if we wanted to.” She was laying her words out carefully, each coming to her just before she said them. “We couldn’t bend to all of New York’s stringent ritual now if we tried. There are many difficulties, but how could any of their pieties or judgments keep us from seeing each other? We’re in love, after all.”
“Di…” He swallowed hard again — this time it was a sadness going down, and anguish was plainly visible in his face over all he had done. “I don’t want you to be just my mistress.”
The ship rose and fell with the water and, a little beyond them, across the blond boards of the deck, the two soldiers watched the scene of the huddling sweethearts as though, even now, they might take their chances overboard. But Diana had never felt steadier, surer. The sick feeling was completely gone now, and she knew she must be a great deal older for seeing, all of a sudden and so clearly, how men could be the weaker sex. Even a fellow like Henry was too sensitive in moments like these, and she understood that it was she who had to be brave and lay out how it would be.
Now Diana’s smile was one of patience. She went on as though she were telling him a story: “But it won’t be forever, nothing ever is, and anyway I don’t mind being a mistress so much if I’m your mistress.” They leaned in to each other, so that their foreheads touched. Suddenly the prospect of sacrificing any amount of dignity for him, for the whole grand romance, seemed very heroic. “How could I mind being your mistress, when I love you so?”
He only nodded, their heads bobbing against each other to the rhythm of the ocean. A gull swooped, cawing, just behind her, and Diana found she was surprised that they were still close enough to land for all that. The sea was green-gray around them, and the place they were leaving was obscured by streaky clouds through which a few blades of fading sun shone for the last time that day. Or any day, as far as they were concerned. The place they were going, the stares they were in for — well, she couldn’t imagine that yet. She clung to Henry in the in-between place, and found there was plenty of joy all over her little person right where she was.