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She decided to make her confession to Lloyd on Tuesday, the day before he left. She had no idea what she was going to say to her husband a day later.
Imagining the conversation she would have with Lloyd, she realized that he would surely kiss her, and when they kissed they would be overwhelmed by their feelings, and they would make love. And then they would lie all night in each other's arms.
At this point in her thinking, the need for discretion intruded into her daydream. Lloyd must not be seen emerging from her quarters in the morning, for both their sakes. Lowthie already had his suspicions: she could tell by his attitude toward her, which was both disapproving and roguish, almost as if he felt that he rather than Lloyd should be the one she should fall for.
How much better it would be if she and Lloyd could meet somewhere else for their fateful conversation. She thought of the unused bedrooms in the west wing, and she felt breathless. He could leave at dawn, and if anyone saw him they would not know he had been with her. She could emerge later, fully dressed, and pretend to be looking for some lost piece of family property, a painting perhaps. In fact, she thought
, elaborating on the lie she would tell if necessary, she could take some object from the junk room and place it in the bedroom in advance, ready to be used as concrete evidence of her story.
At nine o'clock on Tuesday, when the students were all in classes, she walked along the upper floor, carrying a set of perfume vials with tarnished silver tops and a matching hand mirror. She felt guilty already. The carpet had been taken up, and her footsteps rang loud on the floorboards, as if announcing the approach of a scarlet woman. Fortunately there was no one in the bedrooms.
She went to the Gardenia Suite, which she vaguely thought was being used for storage of bed linen. There was no one in the corridor as she stepped inside. She closed the door quickly behind her. She was panting. I haven't done anything yet, she told herself.
She had remembered aright: all around the room, piled up against the gardenia-printed wallpaper, were neat stacks of sheets and blankets and pillows, wrapped in covers of coarse cotton and tied with string like large parcels.
The room smelled musty, and she opened a window. The original furniture was still here: a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a writing table, and a kidney-shaped dressing table with three mirrors. She put the perfume vials on the dressing table, then she made the bed up with some of the stored linen. The sheets were cold to her touch.
Now I've done something, she thought. I've made a bed for my lover and me.
She looked at the white pillows and the pink blankets with their satin edging, and she saw herself and Lloyd, locked in a clinging embrace, kissing with mad desperation. The thought aroused her so much that she felt faint.
She heard footsteps outside, ringing on the floorboards as hers had. Who could that be? Morrison, perhaps, the old footman, on his way to look at a leaking gutter or a cracked windowpane. She waited, heart pounding with guilt, as the footsteps came nearer, then receded.
The scare calmed her excitement and cooled the heat she felt inside. She took one last look around the scene and left.
There was no one in the corridor.
She walked along, her shoes heralding her progress, but she looked perfectly innocent now, she told herself. She could go anywhere she wanted; she had more right to be here than anyone else; she was at home; her husband was heir to the whole place.
The husband she was carefully planning to betray.
She knew she should be paralyzed by guilt, but in fact she was eager to do it, consumed by longing.
Next she had to brief Lloyd. He had come to her apartment last night, as usual, but she could not have made this assignation with him then, for he would have expected her to explain herself and then, she knew, she would have told him everything and taken him to her bed and ruined the whole plan. So she had to speak to him briefly today.
She did not normally see him in the daytime, unless she ran into him by accident, in the hall or library. How could she make sure of meeting him? She went up the back stairs to the attic floor. The trainees were not in their rooms, but at any moment one of them might appear, returning to his room for something he had forgotten. So she had to be quick.
She went into Lloyd's room. It smelled of him. She could not say exactly what the fragrance was. She did not see a bottle of cologne in the room, but there was a jar of some kind of hair lotion beside his razor. She opened it and sniffed: yes, that was it, citrus and spice. Was he vain? she asked herself. Perhaps a little bit. He usually looked well dressed, even in his uniform.
She would leave him a note. On top of the dresser was a pad of cheap writing paper. She opened it and tore out a sheet. She looked around for something to write with. He had a black fountain pen with his name engraved on the barrel, she knew, but he would have that with him, for writing notes in class. She found a pencil in the top drawer.
What could she write? She had to be careful in case someone else should read the note. In the end she just wrote: "Library." She left the pad open on the dresser where he could hardly fail to see it. Then she left.
No one saw her.
He would probably come to his room at some point, she speculated, perhaps to fill his pen with ink from the bottle on the dresser. Then he would see the note and come to her.
She went to the library to wait.
The morning was long. She was reading Victorian authors--they seemed to understand how she felt right now--but today Mrs. Gaskell could not hold her attention, and she spent most of the time looking out of the window. It was May, and there would normally have been a brilliant display of spring flowers on the grounds of Ty Gwyn, but most of the gardeners had joined the armed forces, and the rest were growing vegetables, not flowers.
Several trainees came into the library just before eleven, and settled down in the green leather chairs with their notebooks, but Lloyd was not among them.
The last lecture of the morning ended at half past twelve, she knew. At that point the men got up and left the library, but Lloyd did not appear.
Surely he would go to his room now, she thought, just to put down his books and wash his hands in the nearby bathroom.
The minutes passed, and the gong sounded for lunch.
