Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray, Page 2

  “I wish you’d stop referring to it as a romance,” said Rosemary, who was now tired of sitting in the sun and said so. She declared that they go back into the studio, stood up before Helen could voice her opinion, and went inside.

  “Are you upset with me?” asked Helen, as she joined Rosemary on the divan.

  “No, I’m just tired,” said Rosemary. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “You do know that I consider you like a sister, Rosemary—one I can tolerate unlike my true sisters. You can always talk to me about what’s distressing you.”

  “I see Dorian every day,” began Rosemary.

  “Well, it is an especially giant canvas,” said Helen, elbowing Rosemary’s thigh in jocularity. “I’m enveloped in its great shade!”

  “No,” said Rosemary with a laugh. “I mean I see him daily in the flesh. He sits for me every afternoon—has been for months.”

  “That seems appropriate,” said Helen “You must immerse yourself in the work and not let a day go by.”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. He makes me happy, Helen. I’m not happy until I see him, and I’m in agony as soon as he leaves. Even now, knowing I will see him soon, my heart is racing with suspense. I need him. I can’t live without him.”

  “How extraordinary!” said Helen, embracing Rosemary as if to congratulate her. “I thought you would never care for anything but your art.”

  “He is all my art to me now,” said Rosemary, her eyes welling. “What oil painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous to late-Greek sculpture—that is what Dorian Gray is to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. He’s my inspiration. You remember that landscape of mine, for which I was offered such a huge price but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done because Dorian was sitting beside me while I painted it, just watching me with those mysterious eyes of his. For the first time in my life, I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always missed.”

  Helen clapped in excitement. “Extraordinary! I must see this man! How old is he? He looks very young.”

  “He’s actually two years younger than me!”

  “And, I assume, unspoken for?”

  Rosemary blushed. “We don’t talk about such things.”

  “Oh, innocent little sister,” said Helen, coiling a strand of Rosemary’s chestnut hair around her finger. “And you’re so beautiful. Tell me, is he very fond of you?”

  Rosemary squirmed, the all too familiar sensation of desire coursing through her. She crossed and uncrossed her legs.

  “He likes me,” she said after a pause in which she fought down the swarm of butterflies in her stomach. “I know he likes me. But he seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. The things he says sometimes. He’s got . . .” and she paused again, the butterflies in her stomach now fluttering out of fear. She sought the right words, ones that wouldn’t provoke Helen. If she told the truth, even jaded Helen would reel with shock. “He just has a very different approach to the world than me.”

  To Rosemary’s relief, Helen didn’t inquire further. “You’re under the spell of his beauty, certainly. And your art will last longer than his beauty. You will probably tire of him before he tires of you. It’s summer now, the days are apt to linger. But soon it will be fall and then winter and the infatuation will die out.”

  “Helen, don’t talk like that,” scolded Rosemary. “As long as I live, Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can’t feel what I feel. You change too often.”

  “Ah, Rosemary,” said Helen, lighting yet another cigarette. “That is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

  They sat quietly, with Helen smoking in her self-satisfied way, when suddenly she grabbed Rosemary’s arm, her eyes huge with revelation.

  “I just remembered!” she cried. “I’ve heard the name Dorian Gray before!”

  Rosemary’s heart stammered and plunged. “What? Where?”

  “At my aunt’s house. She told me she had discovered a wonderful young man who was going to help her in East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. She didn’t mention how good-looking he was—though she did mention that he was earnest and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was him!”

  Rosemary was nervous thinking of Dorian out on the town. There she was being foolish again. What did it matter to her what he did or who he was with? She couldn’t be with him at all times—one could even say she shouldn’t be with him in the first place.

  “Why ever are you so pale, Rosemary? You look like you may faint.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Dorian Gray anymore,” snapped Rosemary. “And I don’t want you to meet him and dissect him and inject your poison into his veins.”

  Just then, the butler tapped on the door, clearing his throat as he readied his announcement.

  “Yes, Parker?” said Rosemary.

  “Pardon me, Miss,” he said, glancing hesitantly at Helen, who smiled curtly in response.

  “Dorian Gray is in the sitting room, Miss,” said Parker.

  If Rosemary was pale before, she was white as a sheet now. Helen jumped up, grabbing Rosemary’s hand.

  “You must introduce me now!”

  Rosemary ignored Helen and looked at Parker. “Please tell Mr. Gray I will be with him in a few minutes,” she said. Parker bowed and went up the walk.

  “Rosemary!” Helen shrieked.

  Rosemary leaped up and grabbed Helen by the shoulders, looking straight at her.

  “Please don’t seduce him!” she begged. “Don’t take away the one person who gives to my art the charm it possesses. My life as an artist depends on him. I’m trusting you, Helen.”

  “What nonsense you talk!” cried Helen, smiling mischievously and, taking Rosemary by the arm, leading her down the hall toward the sitting room.

  CHAPTER II

  Rosemary could hear her heart pounding in the throes of anticipation. He was here. Every day for weeks she’d had the pleasure, pained though it could be, of seeing him—this ecstatic creature who so beguiled and bewitched her. The thrill never dulled. As soon as Parker announced the arrival of Mr. Gray, Rosemary’s hands tingled, her breath became a heated pant, and the slow walk down the hall behind the rickety butler became like a walk upon a teetering bridge, every step leaden with anticipation. She could not get to the end of it quickly enough. When she finally reached the door to the sitting room, she was famished for the sight of him.

  Helen was determined to be literally one step ahead of Rosemary. Her broad hips were in full, seductive swing, satin skirts thrashing against her surprisingly elegant ankles. She wore the smuggest expression, and her eyes were ablaze with an unfathomable confidence. Rosemary wondered, digging her teeth into her lower lip, how Dorian would respond to a woman so strong and entitled.

  He was seated at the piano with his back to them, turning over the pages to a volume of Schumann’s “Forest Scenes.” Seeing him at last, Rosemary’s heart fluttered with such fury she felt in danger of fainting. That would make for quite a scene, she thought. Perhaps he would leap up to catch her and carry her away to bed where he’d restore her with a passionate kiss. She forgot all about Helen. There was no one in the world but Dorian Gray, and here he was, just feet away.

  When he turned around, he appeared surprised by Helen. He raised a brow inquisitively at Rosemary. Just one of our many private communications, she thought. Not even the devilishly observant Helen would catch the secret exchange of their expressions, their dancing eyes. Rosemary went in for a curtsey that, with her trembling knees, was a near-disaster. Helen arched and dipped like a pro, raising her bundle of fine skirts a little too high above the ankle for Rosemary’s taste. She winced as she noticed a faint blush color Dorian’s cheeks. He stood to g
reet them.

  “This is Lady Henry Wotton, Helen. She is a dear friend of mine. I have just been telling her what a wonderful sitter you are,” said Rosemary, and, feeling her face heat up as she went in for a joke, she said, “And now you stand and spoil your fine reputation!”

  Nobody laughed. Helen made a sad, faint hmph.

  “You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray,” said Helen, stepping forward and extending her hand. “My aunt has often spoken to me about you. You are one of her favorites, and, I am afraid, one of her victims also.”

  Dorian looked as if his eyes could pop out of his skull. It was likely he had never heard a woman speak so boldly before—and surely not one as peculiarly beautiful as Helen. He regained his repose, and then appeared the wickedly playful smile Rosemary had so anticipated.

  “I am in your Aunt Agatha’s black books at present,” said Dorian, with a funny look of penitence. Rosemary wondered with a quick, needling pain in her breast what such a look meant. Dorian went on. “I promised to go to play a piano duet with her in a show last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. This isn’t the first time I’ve been so negligent. I am far too frightened to call.”

  Helen tilted her head back in a laugh. Rosemary marveled at her. She was so expert in her movements. If Rosemary were to laugh like that, she would probably make a foul snorting sound.

  Helen continued. “Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you. And I don’t think it matters about your not showing. The audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people.”

  “That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me,” answered Dorian, laughing. Rosemary beamed with pride. He was a fair match to Helen’s wits, to say the least. And what a beautiful laugh he had!

  Rosemary read in Helen’s eyes as they gazed at Dorian that she was not only finding amusement in Gray’s bold wit, but was also rushing to take in his beauty. He was just wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his deep gray eyes, his silky gold hair. All the candor of youth was there in him, as well as all of youth’s passionate purity. There was something in his face that made one want to get to know him at once, and to be seen by him. Rosemary felt it so strongly. If he wouldn’t hold her, he would behold her: She would exist so much more vividly if it was before his eyes.

  “Shall we head to the studio?” asked Rosemary, feeling her role reduced to merely that of a painter now that the gorgeous and scene-stealing Helen was present.

  “Oh, I am tired of sitting,” said Dorian.

  Rosemary frowned. “I’m nearly finished,” she said.

  Dorian shrugged and turned away like a spoiled child. He really could be incorrigible, Rosemary noted with some reassuring sense of disapproval. Good, she thought. I must remember his negative qualities and how unpleasant he can be.

  She rose to lead the way through the hall to the studio. Helen barged in front of her, summoning Dorian’s arm, which she grabbed with manhandling brute. Rosemary reminded herself to not take it personally, as Helen insisted on being the center of attention no matter who the audience. But Dorian Gray was hers. No, he was not hers in the way Helen was infamous for having men, but he was as much hers as she’d ever dreamed anyone could be. She could be happy within their limitations.

  Back in the studio, Helen flung herself into a large wicker armchair, restlessly folding and unfolding her legs—probably to sneak Dorian a glimpse of her upscale undergarments. Her beauty was strange . . . almost masculine. She was strikingly tall and broad-shouldered, with an imposing posture Rosemary had never known in a woman. She stained her lips a satiny red and wore a peachy rouge on her cheeks, which were always shielded in a diaphanous powder. Her hair was a dark blonde; it was thick and unruly and she never wore it down, keeping it always back in a taut bun. Frizzy tendrils stuck out of the sides, easily engaged with a room’s static electricity. Lady Henry Wotton could certainly afford new shoes—boxes of them—but she wore the same dirt-caked Adelaide boots she’d donned for years.

  “You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray—far too charming,” Helen was going on in her throaty know-it-all drawl. She opened her cigarette case and offered Dorian a smoke. He politely declined. Rosemary smiled at him.

  “And Rosemary, of course, would never smoke,” Helen added. “So many things she would never do.” It was a pointless jab. Rosemary pretended not to be bothered, tending diligently to mixing colors and preparing brushes. But if Helen kept this up, it would be impossible to work. Was she planning on staying all day? Did she not recognize how precious these final moments with Dorian were? Rosemary imagined Dorian hearing her thoughts and spanking her promptly on her trembling wrist. Of course Helen didn’t recognize such a thing. No one but Rosemary knew how treasured her times were with Dorian. She had to put up a fight of some kind. She hesitated for a moment and then said firmly to Helen, “Dorian and I agreed to complete our sessions today, and I’m afraid your effortless charms are very distracting.”

  Helen cocked her head like an exotic parrot who can’t fathom what words it is being asked to repeat. Unbelievable! Rosemary looked at Dorian for guidance, but he was looking at Helen with sustained intrigue.

  “Helen,” Rosemary continued, opting for a bolder position. “Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked you to go away?”

  Now it was Helen’s eyes that looked about to pop out. Rosemary had never spoken so bravely.

  “I’m very sorry,” started Rosemary, but Helen shushed her with a disregarding wave. Sucking languidly from her cigarette, she nodded once at Rosemary, then addressed Dorian.

  “Am I to go, Mr. Gray?” she asked.

  Dorian glanced hopefully at Rosemary, as if she was his mother and Helen a new friend with whom he could meddle in grown-up affairs. What to make of their dynamic?

  “It’s whatever you wish, Dorian,” Rosemary said, frowning.

  “Please don’t go, Helen,” said Dorian. Rosemary had never heard him so earnest. Was he already in love with Helen? Rosemary had an urge to warn him that Helen would eat him alive, would suck him down like one of her drugged cigarettes.

  “I want you to tell me why I should not go into philanthropy,” Dorian said to Helen.

  “I don’t know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray,” started Helen. “It is so tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don’t really mind, Rosemary, do you?” Helen shot a poisonous dart of a look at Rosemary. “You have often told me that you like your sitters to have someone to chat to,” she said.

  Rosemary bit her lip—she did so whenever she was flustered, which was so often now that Dorian was in her life. She felt Dorian’s cold gaze upon her as she bit, and so she held her teeth for just a moment, so the blood flushed to the surface. It was well known between them that this innocent habit of hers maddened him. Ah, it was not so innocent anymore!

  “If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay,” said Rosemary, gaining confidence now that she had Dorian’s eyes on her. “And, of course, so long as your husband does not mind waiting.”

  Helen was quick to retort, replying dryly. “We had a very long engagement.”

  Dorian chuckled. Rosemary gagged. She had never made Dorian laugh with a witty remark—only when she tripped on a stray piece of cord or committed some other act of clumsiness.

  He stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr. He abhorred having to stay still for so long.

  “Rosemary has told me much about you,” he said to Helen, speaking like a ventriloquist, his lips hardly moving. “Are you as terrible an influence as she says?”

  “Splendid!” Rosemary complimented Dorian on his pose. It wasn’t perfect—in fact, it was a bit sloppy, but she was compelled to get back into a zone of one-on-one conversation and put up a window that Helen could only press her nose agains
t. Her jealousy radiated outward like a merciless sun. She began to paint with fevered urgency. Only a few touch-ups to make, she thought, then I’m done with him—with this entire obsession—forever! A second, cruel voice within her chimed in: And then what will life consist of? Who are you, Rosemary Hall, without Dorian Gray? Rosemary swallowed both voices and persisted with her work.

  Ever delighted by her notoriety, Helen was reveling in the fact that Rosemary had alluded to her as a dangerous woman. “People are so afraid of themselves, nowadays,” she carried on. “They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve and are naked.”

  Rosemary blushed at the word “naked” and felt Dorian’s eyes on her. There they were, gray as wolves and just as predatory. The heat that had been jealousy gave way to a throbbing desire. How he seized the opportunity to make her squirm. It was as difficult to look him in the eyes as it was to resist them. The heat in Rosemary rose to a stifling degree as Dorian smiled suggestively at her, then ran his eyes down her bodice, following the swell of her breasts. Rosemary’s nipples grew erect as his gaze held, then lowered down her corseted waist, then below . . . searching sinfully in the folds of her petticoats. Helen went on talking, but Rosemary was no longer listening and, it seemed, neither was Dorian. Last night’s dream played in Rosemary’s mind. Instead of fearing the crude acts, Rosemary wanted to re-enact them. Now. With him. Of course, she could not, she would not. This was not the kind of situation for which she’d been saving her maidenhead.

  “The finishing touches are nearly complete,” she said, breaking the spell between herself and Dorian. “Dorian, could you turn your head a little more to the right?”