An Embarrassment of Riches (29 page)

She gave a sigh of sheer delight. Although Ballacharmish had been exquisitely furnished it hadn't boasted the luxury of hot water from taps. Miriam came in and poured a phial of sweet-smelling oil into the bath.

‘Can I help you to undress, madam?' she asked solicitously.

Maura nodded, never in her life had she been so eager to be free of her clothes. As she stepped out of the dress she had worn day and night since leaving Ballacharmish, Miriam picked it up. ‘Would you like me to … dispose of this, madam?'

Maura looked at the dress. While aboard the
Scotia
it had been stained by more than one child's vomit and the hem had trailed in all kinds of nauseous substances. Despite the care with which she had repeatedly sponged it, marks and stains remained and it was fit only for burning.

‘No,' she said, remembering the occasions when she had worn it at Ballacharmish. It had been the dress she had sometimes gardened in. The dress she had worn when she and Isabel had gathered raspberries and blackberries.

Miriam was looking at her in stark disbelief and she said gently, in explanation, ‘The dress has many happy memories for me. Would you have it laundered and sent on to me at Tarna?'

Miriam nodded, wondering if the new Mrs Karolyis knew exactly how far away Tarna was, wondering what happy memories a dowdy, horrendously stained dress could possibly possess.

For the next half-hour Maura luxuriated in the hot fragrant water, refusing to think of any of the issues that had to be thought about. She would think about them later, after she had talked, to Alexander. For the moment all she wanted to do was to revel in the sensation of being sweetly clean again.

Miriam washed her hair for her, towelling it dry. An hour later, smelling fragrantly of French toilet water, Maura finally emerged from the bathroom and re-entered a bedroom that had been transformed. The palatial bed was submerged beneath a sea of gowns. Every chair and table was piled high with shawls and bonnets and gloves.

It had been years since Maura had lapsed into the papist patois of her childhood, but she did so now. ‘Heavens and all the saints!' she exclaimed, staring at the dizzying array in stunned wonder.

Behind her, Miriam grinned. She was beginning to like the new Mrs Alexander Karolyis very much indeed. No American lady would ever have come out with such an expression and despite her lack of luggage it was quite obvious that the new Mrs Karolyis
was
a lady.

As well as gowns and shawls and bonnets and gloves, there were fine linen and lace-edged undergarments. With deep pleasure Maura allowed herself to be helped into them. She hadn't fully realized until now what a shock to her system the experience of travelling steerage had been. Life at Ballacharmish had accustomed her to a standard of living that had been agony to forgo. Now it was once again hers, and in indecent abundance.

As Miriam laced up her stays she wondered how her fellow passengers were faring. They would be on Ellis Island now, enduring the indignities of medical inspections. She would ask Alexander how long they might expect to be detained there and then in another few days she would look up all of them who had been able to give her an address. However fortunate they may have been, having some family already in the city with whom they could stay, the conditions they would be living in would be overcrowded and grim. She would be able to help them. As Mrs Alexander Karolyis she would be able to help a lot of people.

There was a firm knock at the door and Miriam hastily handed her a flimsy
peignoir.

‘Shall I answer it, madam?' she asked uncertainly as Maura slid her arms into fragile lace sleeves.

‘But I'm not dressed …' Maura began, certain that her visitor was Alexander. And then she remembered. He was her husband. Wishing that her cheeks would not flush so readily she said a trifle breathlessly: ‘Would you ask Mr Karolyis to give me another ten minutes, please.'

Miriam opened the door and proceeded to do so, but Alexander was unaccustomed to taking messages from female members of staff and strode past her as he would have done if he had been paying a visit on Charlie.

Maura sat down suddenly on the rosewood chair before her dressing-table, her hair streaming down her back, the gowns on the bed far out of reach.

Alexander came to an abrupt halt. She had looked personable aboard the
Scotia
and beautiful amid the lavish décor of the Chinese drawing-room. Now she looked more than beautiful. She looked infinitely desirable. He felt his sex harden. He had intended consummating his marriage at Tarna, but Tarna was several hours' train ride and drive away.

Instead of asking her to be ready to leave in a half an hour, as he had planned to do, he said hoarsely, ‘I think we should talk.'

‘Yes.'

There was a hint of huskiness in her voice which he was beginning to like very much. He was beginning to like everything about her. He dismissed the maid and when the door had closed behind her he said, ‘I should have talked to you aboard the
Scotia
.'

She nodded, acutely aware of her near nakedness beneath the lace robe; acutely aware that if he wished he could look on her entirely naked and it would incredibly still not be at all improper.

‘Where would you like me to begin?' Beneath the fragile lace he could see the creamy high curve of her breasts and the soft fullness of her hips.

Her eyes met his. At the heat she saw there, her heart began to beat in sharp, slamming strokes that she could feel even in her fingertips.

He crossed the room towards her and she rose to her feet unsteadily. His hands took hold of hers and she said thickly: ‘Tell me about Genevre.'

He said simply, ‘I loved her. I loved her with all my heart.'

She remained silent, waiting for him to continue, knowing instinctively that he had never talked like this to anyone ever before.

His hair had fallen low over his brow again and he released his hold of her, brushing it backwards in a movement that was becoming familiar.

‘She was English,' he said at last, turning away from her and walking over to one of the gold-brocade-draped windows. ‘Her father was William Hudson the Yorkshire Railway King.'

He stared down over a vast expense of immaculately cared-for lawn, his voice thick with emotion. ‘She was thirteen when I first met her. Seventeen when I fell in love with her.'

He thought of Genevre as she had looked at Leonard Jerome's house-warming party, unimaginably beautiful in her white broderie-anglaise gown, her shining auburn hair swept high in a chignon, her eyes full of impish laughter. His hands balled into fists. ‘We wanted to marry … were going to marry …' He swung round to face her, all his pain and fury once more resurfacing. ‘My father thought she wasn't good enough for me. He wanted me to marry into one of the old, noble families of Europe.'

‘But how could she not be good enough for you?' she asked, bewildered. ‘William Hudson is both a millionaire and a genius. In England he …'

‘My great-grandfather was an Hungarian peasant. Despite all the millions my grandfather made, New York high society never allowed him to forget the fact. My father forced them to by marrying a Schermerhorn.'

She still looked bewildered and he said, explaining further, ‘The only families that matter in New York are the old families; families that have been leaders of society ever since New York was known as New Amsterdam and governed by the Dutch. Marrying a Schermerhorn gained my father the social acceptance that had previously been denied him, but in New York people have long memories. To make the Karolyis name as unassailable as Schermerhorn or Stuyvesant or De Peyster, he needed me to marry even more prestigiously than he had done.'

Maura was bewildered no longer, her familiarity with Anglo-Irish high society enabling her to understand the closed-caste world he was describing.

‘At the end of last summer I left New York for a Grand Tour of Europe. I had known for ages that I would be going on it – everyone does. Neither Ginnie nor myself minded too much because we had made up our minds to marry the instant I returned home no matter what my father said or did.'

He swung on his heel, striding back towards the window again, every line of his body taut with tension. ‘I never heard from Ginnie again. None of my letters were ever answered. I had just determined to abandon my trip and come home to find out what the hell was happening when I had a riding accident.' A pulse throbbed at the corner of his jaw. ‘It was six months before I could walk again and during those six months I learned why I had never heard from Ginnie.'

Once more at the window he rounded towards her, his eyes burning into hers. ‘My father had told her that I had become engaged to one of Lord Powerscourt's daughters. He told the entire city. God alone knows how it never came to Powerscourt's ears. And he saw to it that none of my letters ever reached Ginnie, and that none of her letters to me were ever posted.'

‘But how? I don't understand …'

‘He would have bribed one of the servants,' Alexander said savagely, having no illusions about the kind of methods his father would have used. ‘It was Charlie who wrote to me telling me of my supposed engagement. The minute I realized what my father had done I telegraphed Charlie asking him to speak to Ginnie immediately and to put her wise to what was going on.'

His handsome, finely chiselled face was a mask of pain.

‘When Charlie went to the Hudson mansion he discovered that Ginnie and her father had sailed for England. Powerscourt did his best to trace her for me, but although William Hudson had returned to their family home in Yorkshire, Ginnie hadn't done so. She was rumoured to be vacationing with an aunt.'

He stood with his back to the window, facing her but no longer seeing her, far away in a private hell. ‘The minute I could walk again I made plans to travel to England. I was so utterly sure I would find her … so utterly sure that for the rest of our lives we would be together.'

His voice cracked and she was filled with the uncontrollable desire to cross the room to him and to take him in her arms.

‘She was dead,' he said with terrible simplicity. ‘By the time I read of her death in
The Times
she had been dead for five days.' His eyes were dark with unspeakable torment. ‘She died believing that I no longer loved her. That I had been faithless to her.'

He remained standing at the window, his hands still balled into fists, his pain so deep that she didn't know how she would ever be able to ease it.

‘I'm sorry,' she said at last from the bottom of her heart, hating the inadequacy of the trite words. ‘It's a terrible story and I understand now why you behaved as you did, downstairs.'

Alexander's shoulders had been hunched. Now, as she obliquely reminded him of his father, he wearily straightened them. ‘I don't want to see him ever again,' he said, white lines etching the corners of his mouth. ‘Which means leaving as soon as possible. How soon can you be ready?'

Maura looked around at the cascading heaps of clothes. It would take Miriam hours to pack them all.

‘In half an hour.' She would summon another dozen maids to help Miriam. Clothes that weren't packed she would leave behind.

He nodded. There had been a moment, when he had first entered the room, when he had been almost overcome by the urge to make love to her, but that had been before Ginnie's almost palpable presence had come between them. He crossed the room to the door, saying only, ‘I'll meet you downstairs in the entrance-hall in thirty minutes.'

When he had gone she felt ridiculously bereft. She didn't ever want to be apart from him, not even for a single moment. She folded her arms around herself, hugging herself tight. She wanted to make him happy as Genevre had made him. She wanted him to love her just as much as he had loved Genevre.

When Miriam re-entered the room she was already stepping into an afternoon dress of close-fitting, rose-pink whale-boned silk. ‘I have to be ready to leave for Tarna in thirty minutes,' she said, sliding the dress over her hips. ‘Will you ring for every available maid and ask them to begin packing for me, please?'

At the thought of only thirty minutes in which to help her new mistress to dress, attend to her hair, and supervise the packing of her clothes, Miriam blanched. If the new Mrs Karolyis was always going to be in such an undignified rush, perhaps it was a good thing that she was going to Tarna. On the other hand, life with such a mistress would never be dull. Haines had told her that Mr Alexander had given instructions that the valet who had accompanied him from Ireland was also to accompany him to Tarna. She wondered if Mrs Karolyis would like it if she accompanied her to Tarna and if she dare suggest the idea to her.

Maura turned her back to her so that she could fasten the tiny silk-covered buttons that ran from the neck of her dress to the base of her spine.

‘I hope you won't think me presumptuous, madam,' she said nervously as her nimble fingers hooked button after button. ‘But if you haven't a lady's maid, I would be very happy to accompany you to Tarna.'

It was an offer of friendship as well as of service and Maura recognized it as such. ‘I would love you to be my permanent lady's maid,' she said gratefully, turning to face her. ‘Who should I speak to in order to arrange it?'

‘There's no need for you to speak to any one, madam,' Miriam said, her eyes shining. ‘I will tell Haines that you wish it, and he will arrange for me to travel to Tarna with Mr Alexander's valet and the baggage.'

The maids she had sent for could be heard hurrying up the back-stairs and, at the thought of all there was still to do, Miriam was filled with sudden panic. Sensing it, Maura said hopefully, ‘If you can find some pins for me I can do my own hair.'

With vast relief Miriam rifled through the carrying-bag she had brought into the room with her, setting long black coral pins on the cut-glass dressing-table tray. ‘Are you sure, madam …'