Bath Belles Read Free Page B

with a natural wave. My favorite of Graham’s features was his noble brow. It was high and clear, with the hair growing to a widow’s peak in front.
    I picked up his silver-backed brush, touched the comb with one of his hairs still on it. The blue jacket he must have worn to work that day was still slung over the back of a chair. The servants should have tidied up before leaving. I knew from the lawyer that the two servants had been paid and sent off, his horses sold, and other such exigent matters attended to. But no one had packed his clothes and personal effects. It would be for me to do.
    I’d have Hotchkiss make up a bundle of anything he didn’t want and give it to charity. Some few mementos I would keep—Graham’s watch, perhaps, or a bit of jewelry. I drew open the drawer of his desk and saw bound up in blue ribbons my letters to him, as his to me were in my desk at home. The oval miniature I had given him of a young Belle Haley was there on his desk where he could look at it while he wrote to me, as he mentioned once in a letter he did. It was an eerie sensation, almost like having a last chance to talk to Graham. I said what one must say in a final conversation. Good-bye, dear Graham. I love you. Then I quietly closed the door and met Mama, come to see if I was in tears.
    “Go to bed, Mama. It’s very late,”I said.
    “Are you…all right, Belle?”she asked.”
    “I’m fine. Graham wouldn’t want me to cry willow forever, but I shall sleep in the other room. I was just—saying good-bye to him.”
    “It’s for the best, dear,”she consoled, and patted my shoulder.
    I kissed her cheek and went to the rose room at the end of the hall. This room facing the street was noisy, even past midnight. How could people live amid such bustle? Did folks never settle down in London? It was impossible not to think how things would have been had Graham lived. I would be lying with him in that lovely blue canopied bed. By now, a child might be sleeping in another room. But it was not to be, so I would sell the house, let some other lady fill up the nursery here, and get on with a different life for myself back home at Bath. Oh, but what a hollow, meaningless life it was without Graham!
     

Chapter Two
     
    At Bath we considered ourselves early risers, but we were not in the habit of entertaining callers at such an early hour as nine o’clock. That was the time our first caller arrived at Elm Street. A respectable-looking woman in a navy pelisse with sable trim stood on the doorstep. She had determined that the house was for sale and expressed an interest in seeing it. I didn’t want to let her get away, yet to take her on a tour, when Mama and Esther were still making toast over the coals in the saloon grate was obviously undesirable.
    “If you could come back in an hour ...” I suggested.
    She tossed her head and sniffed. “There are plenty of homes for sale. If you’re not interested ...”
    I ground my teeth at her lofty manner and said, “Do come in.”She entered, looking all around at the windows, uncleaned for upwards of two years, ran her finger over dusty window ledges, opened cupboards and found their doors poorly hung or requiring oil, or the shelves within badly spaced. With tsks of annoyance from the customer and disjointed explanations from myself, the tour continued to bedrooms with unmade beds, everything “so terribly small,”halls “pitch black,”stairways “dangerously steep.”I came to appreciate my mother’s manner of description that morning.
    And after it was all over the woman had the gall to say, “I am not really looking for a house at the moment.”
    “Then why are you here?”I demanded, eyes flashing.
    “I am your next-door neighbor,”she said, as though that gave her carte blanche to barge in at dawn, disturb our breakfast, and disparage everything. “Mrs. Seymour. My husband and I live in the large house on the corner. We have often mentioned removing to a smaller