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In any case, that’s where I spent my first night as Mrs. Duke Callahan and became a wife in all senses of the word.
Are you cringing now, darling? Are you bracing yourself for an old woman to delve into purple prose as she details her sexual awakening? Are your eyes already darting ahead, praying to god you don’t see words like “petals” or “engorged”?
Never fear. A lady does not kiss and tell.
All I will say is that, much like the night of his death, this is a night I’ve replayed over and over, both looking for some hint of what was to come and because… well, to be frank, because I’ve often wished that this night was not as good as I remembered.
It’s much easier to recast Duke as a villain if I tell myself that everything I felt on our wedding night was due to being young and sheltered. I’d only kissed two boys before Duke, so naturally sex would be something of a revelation. It wasn’t him, it was me, et cetera.
But these letters are the place for truth, are they not? So now I can admit that yes, Duke was wonderful. That night was wonderful, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been happier in my life than I was that next morning, waking up next to him. I remember our legs touching underneath the sheets, and how that thrilled me, a man’s bare leg warm against my own, the hair there so different from my own smooth skin. I wasfascinated by the contrast of us, of the sunlight playing on the golden stubble that had sprung up on his cheeks overnight, of how delicate and feminine my hand looked against the muscles of his chest.
I lay there in the early morning sun, my body pleasantly sore, my mind a soft muddle of happiness and sleepiness and pleasure, and looked at that gorgeous profile, softer as he slept, and thought,I am the luckiest woman in the world.
I believe they call this “ironic foreshadowing.”
I held that thought in my head for the first few days of our honeymoon. On the train to New York, boarding the ship to Paris.
Lucky,I thought, watching the way women watched Duke.
Lucky,I thought every night as he slid down my body, his lips marking places I’d never thought lips would touch.
Lucky,I was thinking just seconds before his fist met my cheek for the first time.
We’d been married for five days.
I said I was sheltered, and I had been. I knew what alcohol could do to people, had watched it slowly eat my mother from the inside out, but that was my only real experience with drunkenness. I thought if you drank too much, you might cry, as Mama did, or sleep too much, as Mama also did. I didn’t know that for some people, alcohol is the key to a cage inside of them, and inside that cage is a monster.
Duke had been gambling in the ship’s casino that night, and I’d been irritated with how late he returned to our cabin. He kissed my cheek after dinner and said he’d only be an hour or two, then with a wink, whispered, “Don’t you dare go to sleep before I get back.”
The promise in those words had fizzed in my blood like champagne, so I’d had a bath, reapplied my makeup, put onone of the nightgowns from my trousseau that he hadn’t seen yet. It was the same white silk I was wearing the night he died, though that was still a few weeks away.
And then I waited.
And waited.
And the longer I waited, the more irritated I became. My eyelids felt heavy with sleep, but I couldn’t lie down because then I’d muss my makeup, and be a mess when he finally returned. And why was a smoky ship’s casino, filled with boring men and their even more insufferable wives, more enjoyable than my bed?
Oh, the snit I worked myself into.
So by the time he did return, sometime past two in the morning, I was mad as a hornet.
And he was drunk as a skunk.
I could smell it when he walked in, that familiar and awful medicinal smell of gin, bringing me right back to dark hallways, toshh, Mama’s sleeping,to muffled retching behind closed doors.
He’d lost his dinner jacket somewhere, his bow tie hanging around his neck, undone, and for the first time, jealousy raised its ugly head. I thought of my fumbling fingers undoing that tie on our wedding night, how I’d laughed to cover my self-consciousness, and how he’d kissed the tip of my nose and told me I was adorable.
Had some other woman undone that tie for him tonight? My head was full of images of elegant red fingernails, diamonds winking in the low light of the casino, and it made my words sharper than I’d intended.
“You said an hour, Duke,” I reminded him. “It’s been nearly four.”
Holding up one hand, he swayed slightly. “Forgive me, Mrs.Callahan,” he said, and tried to give me that grin, but it was lopsided, and honestly, I was too mad for it to work anyway.
“Ran into an old friend from Yale, Darcy Butler. Did you ever meet Darcy? No, you wouldn’t have. They never let you past the Mason-Dixon Line. Important to keep the princess safe in her kingdom.”
I blinked at him, confused. He was still smiling, but there was poison in the words, hidden darts. I could sense it, but I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know the dangers that followed that tone of voice.
“Anyway, Darce and I did some catching up, and then I lost abysmally at blackjack, so I had to keep playing until I’d dug myself out of the hole.”
