Rumors (21 page)

T
HE GIRL WHO RETURNED TO THE MAIN SCHOONMAKER
ballroom was indifferent to the lack of ornament in her hair or relative sparseness of baubles on her person. She didn’t worry about the modesty of her posture or the kindness of her expression. She was unconcerned with whether she had been nice or not. She was not nice. She did not want to be like her childhood friend Elizabeth Holland anymore. She wanted to be like her new friend Penelope Hayes, and Penelope had promised to show her how. At least, she had promised to lend the glow of her presence, and to invite her along to all the right places, and that would be enough. That was really all she needed. When she reached the spot where she had left Mr. Longhorn, she saw that he had just engaged Mrs. Schoonmaker for a dance. She found that standing there patiently for the right length of time was sufficient to persuade Mr. Hayes to ask the same of her.

“Carolina, are you and my sister very good friends?” he asked as they moved onto the dance floor. Lina’s dress, which
she had charged to Mr. Longhorn’s account at Lord & Taylor, moved along behind her. It was made of a flattering navy that encased her arms and waist and was embellished at the bustline with tiny pearls that offered a pleasing contrast to the skin below her collarbone.

“Yes, very good friends,” she answered. Having said it, she smiled. “Though of course we haven’t known each other long. I’m new to the city.”

She had dreaded the idea of dancing, although she knew that if she really did begin traveling in the moneyed world, she would have to eventually. She had gone so far as to prance around her hotel room trying to remember the steps she had helped Elizabeth practice when she had first started lessons with the finishing governess. Carolina was surprised to find that now, with the glow of confidence that came from having new friends in excellent positions, it was easy enough to reference her western origins as an excuse for any lack of polish and allow herself to be led. When she was led, Carolina Broad danced just fine.

“I hope you aren’t planning to leave us any time soon,” her partner said with an upward twist to his full, shiny lips. It occurred to her that this, her first dance at a society function, was with a bachelor close to her own age. How preferable that was—for the first time, anyway—to old Mr. Longhorn, however kind he had revealed himself to be.

“Oh, I think not.” Carolina’s eyes grew wide, and she allowed herself to feel the full weight of her answer. The room, with its gilded decorations and painted faces, with its high laughter and low murmurs, with its bowers of pine and glittering Christmas stars, was circling around her at an exhilarating pace. That pace, she thought, could be the pace of her life. It would be a shame to leave the city now, she reasoned, when she was just getting somewhere. Staying a little longer, and really polishing herself, would be the smarter thing to do. “I like it here, and anyway, where else is there to go?”

Grayson looked into her eyes with perfect understanding. “Having spent some four years abroad now, I cannot say I agree more. And I’m glad you’ll be staying. If you’re a friend of Penelope’s, then there are some gentlemen to whom I will have to introduce you….”

And later on he did. By the end of the evening her feet were sore from dancing, and her cheeks were permanently flushed from all the compliments she had received. She couldn’t help but think that if Will Keller had been there, she wouldn’t have noticed him in the crowd and that he would have seen clearly what an idiot he’d been for passing her up that night in the carriage house. For she had been partnered with Nicholas Livingston and Abelard Gore and Leland Bouchard, an heir to the Bouchard banking fortune, whose hand sat very low
on the small of her back and who demanded several times to know when he would next see her out.

Later, in the carriage on the way back to the hotel, Carolina would remark with full honesty that it had been a very merry Christmas indeed. The street ahead was covered in a layer of white that had only been disturbed by one or two vehicles ahead of them. The wide mansions, made of imported stone and festooned with all sorts of architectural flourishes, passed slowly as they moved up the avenue. Light flooded their entryways, and seasonal decorations could be seen in their windows. It seemed to Carolina at that moment that, if things kept going her way, Will would see her name in the paper for sure, and then he would have to come looking for her, instead of the other way around. She had to put her hand over her mouth to hide the smile, for she was thinking how bright the New Year would be.

T
HE MANHATTAN THAT ELIZABETH STEPPED BACK
into could not have been more opposite of the city she’d left nearly three months ago. There was no bluster or busyness. There was barely a person on the street. All around her was a kind of deathly quiet, and for a long moment she wondered if she hadn’t truly died and the afterlife wasn’t somehow a New York stripped of its population. There was a new-fallen snow, not yet riven by carriage wheels, and here and there the warm light from inside a window reflected onto a white bank. She would never know for sure, but she thought that this must have been what the city looked like half a century ago: dark, silent, and still. Will kept his arm firmly around her shoulder as they walked, although she wasn’t sure if it was to steady her or to keep her warm.

“You’re cold,” he observed.

She nodded but couldn’t respond further. She was too full of nerves at the prospect of seeing her family, or what she would say to her mother and aunt as a way of explanation. The
only thing keeping her quiet and steady was Will’s presence at her side. They had the ring money—had, in fact—gotten quite a good price for it—and Will had wanted to take a hansom from the station. But Elizabeth had insisted that walking a circuitous route home under cover of darkness was the safest thing to do. Having seen Grayson Hayes on the train was enough of a shock to make her homecoming a very circumspect one, and she reasoned that returning slowly and on her own two feet might also bring a trace of calm.

“We’re almost there,” he added reassuringly, although he knew perfectly well that they were now close enough to Gramercy that she could have found the house blindfolded.

“It’s not the cold,” she said.

“I know that.” His voice was so gentle it was almost like he was holding her. “But being inside will help anyway.”

When they came to it, they stood for a long moment in front of No. 17 Gramercy. Although the brownstone façade stared back at her with the same placid composition of windows and doors as ever, the view through the plate glass was darkened. She had expected some sign of life, and the lack of it gave her a small terror. It was only at Will’s urging that she walked up to the door and, taking the key from its hiding place, unlocked it.

The foyer was unlit, but as her eyes adjusted she saw that the old piece of furniture where visitors used to leave their
cards was gone. A darkened parlor was visible through the wide door frame, and she could tell by the smell that there had been a fire there recently. She clung to Will’s hand as she went up the stairs, and as she did, she saw that the walls were decorated with pictures in frames that were not the pictures she remembered hanging there before. The sound her feet made as they touched the stairs surprised her until she realized that the Persian runner, which used to flow from the second-floor hallway down to the door, was gone.

She soon found that her own room was missing much of the bric-a-brac that had once made it so light and lived-in, although the robin’s egg blue wallpaper was the same, and the great mahogany sleigh bed on the risen platform was made up the same way as it had been made every day for years. She was not nearly as shocked to be back in this room where so many of her days had ended, as she was by the fact that Will was there with her. She had followed him into the unknown, and yet he had never seen her bedroom. It was still her bedroom.

“Will,” she said, turning around to look at him, “I’m glad you came with me.”

He looked down on her with those large, sweet eyes. Strands of hair were out of place, falling over his forehead and around his ears. His brows separated just slightly, and there was movement in his full lower lip. “I know. I am too.”

She moved toward him and he let her in, folding her up
in his taut arms. She propped her chin on his chest, lengthening her neck, and looked up. “I hope I didn’t ruin anything.”

“I don’t think you ruined anything.” A smile had crept onto Will’s face. Then he bent and brought his mouth to hers, their lips touching again and again so lightly the touches could just barely be called kisses. She began to feel warm again for the first time since they’d left the train. When he stopped, she lowered her chin and put her forehead into his chest.

“Do you think she’s…” Elizabeth caught her breath, not wanting to say
alive
. She certainly didn’t want to say
dead
. That would be letting her thoughts rush to the worst, and Will had warned her that that wouldn’t help. “All right?”

“Yes.” Will’s hand moved over her forehead and over her hair. His fingers rested on the tendrils at the nape of her neck. “Yes, but you should go to her.”

Elizabeth pressed her eyelids together. “I’ll go now,” she said, although it took her several moments more to lift her forehead from its solid resting place and look up at Will with a wan smile. He was looking back at her with those same eyes, full of pure intent, which had always affected her so. They were looking through her. They were a reminder that she knew what was right and good.

She found candles in the closet and lit them, although as she left Will in the room he was already lying down on the bed. He had not slept well on the train the night before as
they approached New York. She imagined that by the time she reached the end of the hall he would already be asleep.

The door to her mother’s bedroom, on the east side of the house and facing the street, seemed as fearsome to her as when she lived there. It was perhaps for this reason that she went there first, and not to Diana or her aunt Edith. She pushed back the door with the same trembling approach as when she was a child, needing to face what frightened her the most, and went in. There was no light in the room, but long before her eyes adjusted, she recognized the sound of her mother’s breath. Her mother was breathing. The shore-like sound of her inhalations and exhalations was as natural a thing as Elizabeth had heard, and for a moment she was again a little girl.

“Mother,” she whispered, reaching out for the hand resting nearest her on the bedspread. It was cold but familiar, those long nimble fingers, so useful in the writing of all those notes of thanks and condolence and gossip and spite. Elizabeth could make things out now from what light came through the windows, and when she repeated the word
mother,
she saw a pair of dark eyes slowly open. There was no recognition in them yet, although they gazed stolidly in Elizabeth’s direction.

“Are you all right?”

There were more shadows in the room than light, but
still she could see that the grooves under her mother’s eyes were turned a dark purple.

“Do you recognize me?”

It took some time, but her mother, without breaking the blank stare, gradually brought herself up on her elbows. She blinked and watched the younger woman. Elizabeth wasn’t sure if she was holding back her fury and disbelief, or even if she saw her at all. A few moments passed before her mother said, in a voice that clearly had not been used as much as it was accustomed to: “Is it Christmas?”

“No,” Elizabeth whispered. “Not yet. Not until tomorrow.” She wanted to cry and stopped herself by saying: “Tomorrow is Christmas.”

“Today is Christmas Eve?” Her mother’s eyes had grown so wide they could not possibly have been taking in what was real.

Tears were now streaming down Elizabeth’s cheeks and, fearing audible sobs, she simply nodded. She was crying for all the things she used to want and all the things she’d given up and all the people that she was going to have to leave behind again. She was crying for Will’s perfect vision, which he had included her in, only for her to muck it up with all her old responsibilities.

“Today is Christmas Eve and you’re an angel come back to me in the form of Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth forced her small, rounded lips together and held on to her mother’s hand. “No,” she said when she was able. “I am Elizabeth. It’s Christmas Eve and I’m Elizabeth and I’m not dead—that was all a kind of mistake. I’ve come back from—”

“My Elizabeth is an angel.” The elder Holland woman’s eyes shut and she fell back on the pillow, her dark hair forming a puddle around her white face. “She’s an angel and she came back to me.”

For a long time Elizabeth stood by the bed wondering what she had done to her mother and how she would ever make it better. When she had left, she saw clearly enough now, she had taken the last of what her mother lived for.

Eventually she climbed up on the bed and rested her head on the pillow beside her mother’s and began to wonder, instead, how she was going to tell Will that they couldn’t go back to California until she’d somehow managed to make her mother well again.