Chapter 13 – Game On
“I have never been so happy to say goodbye to people,” said Scarlet when at last she and Ian were alone and driving home.
“They’re not so bad,” said Ian smugly. “You must appreciate Candi’s determination to have a good time. Quite the little Cleopatra, isn’t she?”
“Don’t fall,” said Scarlet sharply and her husband answered, “As if I would sink so low! She’s not my class at all.”
How Scarlet wished he’d said, “YOUR class.” Did he even think of his wife as sexy? Desirable? Feminine? HUMAN, any longer? Instead she asked,
“Why on earth did we invite them, then?”
And Ian answered complacently, “Just an experiment to get your rusty skills up to speed. One must make plenty of daring social experiments to test the field.”
Scarlet was struggling with the horror of that comment when just at that moment Nicholas woke up mightily discontented with everything about his life, requiring Scarlet to crawl into the back seat and minister to the one male who indisputably put her first.
On Wednesday, the mail contained two thank you letters – one addressed to each of them.
She couldn’t bear waiting – she had to open Ian’s, unfolding a sheet of empty pink letter paper stiff as cardboard and ornamented with a single gold “C” – and a shower of rose petals. Not a word.
Candi hadn’t written a single word! Scarlet was humiliated to have to pick up every damn petal – there were thirty-six of them. She took them into Ian’s office where he was working on his accounts (or, as he called it “cooking the books”. It was only his own father he was fooling.)
“This is yours,” she said, dumping them in his lap. “Sorry. I thought it was for the both of us.”
He just laughed.
Scarlet’s letter was more substantial, less suggestive and if that were possible, even more aversive. MORE cards from the Escarpa Gallery, fashion trunk show invitations, fulsomely effusive words about the weekend and an onionskin pattern drawing for a stained-glass window “picking out the colors of your study” – some kind of hunting scene.
Scarlet couldn’t focus on the huntsman picture, she was so appalled by this barrage. She knew Candi wanted her to think Ian had taken her privately up to Scarlet’s study. Damn the woman! And in the guise of offering this idiotic “gift” she was literally daring Scarlet to complain.
“We’ll never invite them back,” Scarlet thought. But did she actually have that much power? She could already hear Ian’s voice insisting they must entertain, make friends, cultivate acquaintanceships with people they didn’t like at all. Why had she done this to herself? She should have realized a castle came with a heavy psychic as well as financial mortgage.
She toyed with the idea of needing to be “in London” on weekends when the unbearable was expected – but didn’t that cede the field to Candi? Wouldn’t she love to play hostess? Back in their London days Scarlet considered their coupledom as a unit, indissoluble, because they loved each other and wanted and valued the same things. It just didn’t feel true anymore. She felt embarrassed and humiliated by the pink honeymoon cloud that once has obscured the entire sky.
She shouldn’t catastrophize. She should play it cleverly. How many women like Candi were there in the world? Couldn’t she figure out some way to keep them at bay? She needed to come up with some clever way to tell Candi she didn’t want this damn “gift.”
Should she say she hated modern glass? Loathed hunting scenes? Something would occur to her but first things first: she must order stationery bearing the name Mrs. Ian Wye. No, no, that wouldn’t do – anyone could be Mrs. Ian Wye. Mrs. Scarlet Wye sounded as if they were already divorced. Ian and Scarlet Wye? That was so American – she could only get away with it if Ian never saw it. Her maiden name was the name she wrote under – Scarlet Stavenger – her “business name” she supposed – but taking away her married name seemed to concede the field. Scarlet Stavenger Wye – that was what was required.
Oakhampton Stationers told her the order couldn’t be ready for two weeks at least, so she sent a telegram to Candi’s gallery.
“No stained glass for me thank you – appreciate the thought.”
Game on.
