Mirror Image

Chapter 1.

The sound of the birds outside was muffled by the heavy brocade curtains
of Henderson Manor, as Olivia Henderson pushed aside a lock of long dark
hair, and continued her careful inventory of her father's china.

It was a warm summer day and, as usual, her sister had gone off
somewhere.

Her father, Edward Henderson, was expecting a visit from his lawyers.

Nestled as they were in Croton-on-Hudson, nearly a three-hour drive from
New York, his attorneys came to see him fairly often. Edward Henderson
ran all his investments from here, as well as overseeing the steel mills
which still bore his name, but which he no longer ran himself. He had
retired from business entirely, two years before, in 1911, maintaining
all his holdings, but trusting entirely in his attorneys and the men who
ran the mills for him. With no sons, he no longer had the interest in
business that he once did. His daughters would never run his steel
mills. He was only sixty-five, but his health had begun to fail over
the past few years, and he preferred viewing the world from his peaceful
perch in Croton-on-Hudson. Here, he could observe the world quietly,
and it was a healthy, wholesome life for his two daughters. It was not
exciting, admittedly, but they were never bored, and they had friends
among all the grand families up and down the Hudson.

The Van Cortlandt manor was nearby, as were the Shepards on the old
Lyndhurst estate. Helen Shepard's father had been Jay Gould, and he had
died twenty years before, and left the extraordinary property to his
daughter. She and her husband, Finley Shepard, ran it beautifully, and
gave frequent parties for the young people nearby.

The Rockefellers had finished building Kykuit in Tarrytown that year,
with its splendid gardens and magnificent grounds, and a house which
rivaled Edward Henderson's just north of them at Croton-on-Hudson.

Henderson Manor was a handsome home, and one which people came from
miles to see, peering through the gates into the lovely gardens.

They could barely see the house from where they stood, shielded as it
was by tall trees, and little turns in the road which led to the formal
driveway. The house itself sat high on a cliff, looking over the Hudson
River. And Edward liked to sit in his study for hours, watching the
world drift by, remembering times past, old friends, and the days when
his life had moved a great deal more quickly .. . taking over his
father's mills in the 1870's .. . being instrumental in the many
industrial changes at the end of the last century. His life had been so
busy then. When he was younger, his life had been so different.

Edward Henderson had married when he was young, and lost a wife and a
young son to diphtheria. After that he had been alone for many years,
until Elizabeth came along. She had been everything any man could ever
dream of, a bright shining streak of light, a comet in a summer sky, so
ephemeral, so dazzling, so beautiful, and so much too quickly gone.

They were married within the year they met. She was nineteen, and he
was in his early forties. By twenty-one, she was gone. Much to
Edward's horror, she had died in childbed. After her death, he had
worked even harder than usual, driving himself until he was numb. He
had left his daughters to the care of his housekeeper and their nurses,
but finally, he realized that he had a responsibility to them. It was
then that he began building Henderson Manor. He wanted them to have
healthy, wholesome lives, out of the city. New York was no place for
children in 1903. They had been ten when he'd actually moved them, and
now they were twenty. He kept the house in the city and worked there,
but he came up to see them as often as he could. At first only on
weekends and then, as he fell in love with it, he began spending more
time on the Hudson, rather than in New York, or Pittsburgh, or Europe.

His heart was there in Croton with his daughters, as he watched them
grow, and little by little his own life began moving more slowly. He
loved being with them, and now he never left them anymore. For the past
two years, he had gone absolutely nowhere. His health had begun to fail
three or four years before.

His heart was a problem, but only when he worked too hard, or let things
upset him, or got terribly angry, which he seldom did now. He was happy
in Croton with his daughters.

It had been twenty years since their mother had died in the spring of
1893, on a warm balmy day that had appeared to him to be God's ultimate
betrayal. He had been waiting outside, filled with such pride, and so
much excitement. He had never dreamed it could happen to him again.

His first wife and infant son had died in an epidemic of diphtheria more
than a dozen years before. But this time, losing Elizabeth had almost
killed him. At forty-five, it was a near mortal blow to him, and he
almost couldn't bear going on without her. She had died in their home
in New York, and at first he felt her presence there. But after a
while, he came to hate the emptiness of it, and he had hated being
there.

He had traveled off and on for months after that, but avoiding the house
meant avoiding the two little girls Elizabeth had left him. And he
couldn't bring himself to sell the house his father had built, and that
he had grown up in. A traditionalist to the core, he felt an obligation
to maintain it for his children. He had closed it eventually, and it
had been two years since he'd been there. Now that he lived in Croton
full-time, he never missed it. Neither the house, nor New York, nor the
social life he'd left there.

And as the summer sounds droned on, Olivia continued her painstaking
inventory of the china. She had long sheets of paper on which she wrote
in her meticulous hand, making note of what they needed to replace, and
what had to be ordered. Sometimes she sent one of the servants to the
house in town to bring something up to them, but for the most part, the
city house was closed, and they never went there.

She knew her father didn't like it. Her father's health was frail, and,
like him, she was happy here in their quiet life in Croton-on-Hudson.

She had actually spent very little time in New York since she was a
child, except for the brief time two years before, when her father had
taken them to New York, to present them to society and all his friends.

She had found it interesting, but truly exhausting.

She was overwhelmed by the parties, the theater, the constant social
demands made on them. She had felt as though she were on stage the
entire time, and she hated the attention. It was Victoria who had
thrived on it, and who had been in a state of total gloom when they
returned to Croton at Christmas. Olivia had been relieved to return to
her books, their home, her horses, her peaceful walks high on the cliff
which led her sometimes to neighboring farms. She loved riding here,
and listening to the sounds of spring, watching winter melt slowly away
from them, seeing the splendor of the turning leaves in October.

She loved taking care of her father's house for him, and had since she
was a very young girl, with the help of Alberta Peabody, the woman who
had raised them. She was
"Bertie" to them, and the closest to a mother
the Henderson girls had ever known. Her eyes were poor, but her mind
was sharp, and she could have told the two young women apart in the
dark, with her eyes closed.

She came to check on Olivia now, and asked her how far she had gotten.

She didn't have the patience, or the eyes, to do this kind of minute
work anymore, and she was always grateful when Olivia did it for her.

Olivia carefully checked the embroidery, the crystal, the linens.

She kept an eye on everything, and she loved doing it, unlike Victoria,
who detested all things domestic. Victoria was, in every possible way,
different from her sister.

"Well, have they broken all our plates, or will we still be able to
manage Christmas dinner? " Bertie smiled as she held up a glass of
ice-cold lemonade and a plate of gingersnaps fresh out of the oven.

Alberta Peabody had spent twenty years caring for the two girls she had
come to think of as "her children." They had become hers at birth, and
she had never left them for a day, not since their mother had died, and
she had first looked into Olivia's eyes and realized instantly how much
she loved her.

She was a short, round woman, with white hair in a small bun at the back
of her head. She had an ample bosom where Olivia had rested her head
through most of her childhood. She had comforted them whenever they
needed it, and whenever their father wasn't there, which had been often
when they were young. For years, he had grieved silently for their
mother and kept his distance. But he had warmed toward them in recent
years, and softened considerably since his health had begun to fail and
he had retired from business. He had a weak heart, which he attributed
to the shock and grief of losing two young wives, and the aggravations
of modern business. He was far happier now that he was running things
from here, and everything could be filtered for him through his
attorneys.

"We need soup plates, Bertie, " Olivia reported solemnly, brushing the
long dark hair back again, totally unaware of her startling beauty.

She had creamy white skin, huge dark blue eyes, and thick shining black
hair the color of a raven. We need fish plates too. I'll order them
from Tiffany next week. We must tell the girls in the kitchen to be
more careful." Bertie nodded, smiling up at her. Olivia could have
been married by now, she could have had her own soup plates to
inventory, instead she was still here, and perfectly at ease, taking
care of her father and his house, and all his people. Olivia had no
desire to go anywhere. She never even thought of it. She was happy
right here at Henderson Manor. Unlike Victoria, who talked constantly
about places halfway around the world, or at the very least in Europe.

She glowered every time she thought of the house they were wasting in
New York, and the fun they might have had there.

Olivia looked down at Bertie then with a childlike grin. She was
wearing a pale blue silk dress, which reached almost to her ankles, and
it looked like a piece of summer sky wrapped around her as she stood
there. She had had the dress copied from a magazine, and made by a
local seamstress. It was a Poiret design, and it looked lovely on her.

It was Olivia who always selected and designed their dresses. Victoria
didn't really care. She let Olivia choose them, particularly, as she
put it, since Olivia was her older sister.

"The cookies are awfully good today, aren't they? Father will love
them." Olivia had ordered them especially for him, and John Watson, his
principal attorney. "I suppose I should organize a tray for them, or
have you already done it? " The two women exchanged a smile, born of
years of sharing responsibilities and duties. And slowly, over the past
few years, Olivia had grown from child to girl, to young woman, and
mistress of her father's home. Olivia was very much in control of her
surroundings, and Bertie knew it. She respected that, and most of the
time deferred now to Olivia's opinions, although she thought nothing of
opposing her, or scolding her, when she went out in the pouring rain, or
did something childishly foolish, which she was still sometimes wont to
do even at twenty. But nowadays Bertie found that less worrisome than
refreshing. Olivia was so serious and responsible, that it did her good
sometimes to forget all that she was supposed to be doing.

"I've set the tray up for you, but I told Cook you'll want to order it
yourself at the last minute, " Bertie told her.

"Thank you." Olivia came down the ladder gracefully, and kissed the old
woman's cheek as she wrapped her long, elegant arms around her.