Rumors (24 page)

“The second was that we leave. She said that if anyone found out, that would be the end of the family forever. Maybe she’ll come visit us, she said. But we can’t stay here.”

Their breathing was slow and their inhalations came at the same time. There was the creak of feet falling on the main stairs, and the sound of instructions being given down in the kitchen. “What do you think?”

“I think,” she said, pressing her lids down hard against each other, “that you need to go buy a suit to be married in.”

Downstairs, Claire was already giving directions for how to set the table and making lists of what was still needed for a proper Christmas dinner. Later, when the late part of the afternoon began to fade into evening, there would be young turkey with chestnut sauce and potatoes whipped with cream and champagne punch. There would be gifts and toasts and prayers. But for now, Elizabeth wanted nothing but to stay in the dark and be held just as she was.

“I
’D LIKE A DOZEN WHITE ROSES, A DOZEN WHITE
freesias, a bunch of baby’s breath….” Diana Holland paused and frowned. She hadn’t made a list, and she was now forgetting all of the things that her sister had asked her to order.

Yesterday, after her brief encounter with Henry, she’d run upstairs for a private moment in her room. That was when she came upon Elizabeth and Will embracing, and she learned their good news. She’d been so swept up in the general exhilaration of love—hers and Henry’s, Liz and Will’s—that she’d volunteered to go to the florist herself when her sister told her the list of things to be done. This was, after all, far preferable to remaining in the house and being “nice” to Snowden. Here she was free to imagine the flowers she’d one day pick out for her and Henry.

He hadn’t come to her last night, but even seeing him on the porch had been enough to consume her thoughts and destroy her concentration. Landry the florist smiled at her from
the other side of the marble counter in his Broadway shop; as he had already told her, it was not a busy day for flowers. “Oh! And lilies of the valley! Do you have any of those…?”

“Sounds like a wedding.”

Diana looked up and into the mirror behind the register. The place was all mirrors where it wasn’t white porcelain tile. She looked into the inquiring eyes of the gossip columnist for a few uncertain seconds, and then she turned so that Mr. Landry wouldn’t note the playful nature of her smile. “Mr. Barnard, are you following me?”

“Not at all,” he answered in a tone that left her entirely in doubt.

“Well, nor are these flowers for a wedding,” she shot back blithely. “We always celebrate a white Christmas at the Holland house. You can print
that
if you like.”

Then she turned back to Mr. Landry and asked if she could pick up her order on Thursday morning.

“Weren’t you here to get flowers, Mr. Barnard?” she asked as he moved to follow her back onto the street.

“I found my daily requirement for visual beauty has unexpectedly been filled by a different source,” he replied, holding the door for her.

Outside the sun was shining, which did nothing to mitigate the icy cut of the wind. Dead leaves reeled in the air and skittered across the sidewalk as Diana brought her camel coat
in closer to her chest. “That’s quite a dose of flattery. Pretty soon I’ll have to start wondering if you don’t have an angle.”

“I hope you won’t think me somehow not in earnest about your beauty if I do.”

“Ah, well, that I can’t tell you.” Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. “Some things must remain a mystery, and for now, I think I’ll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.”

“I’ll have to look forward to that another day, then. Though I do of course have an angle.” He pushed his hat back on his head and arched a dark brow.

“Of course you do!” They were walking up Broadway, and though the cold was biting at her, Diana felt a peculiar elation at being again in the gossip columnist’s company. Perhaps it was knowing that she held a few secrets greater than he could imagine, secrets she could never reveal to him. He walked along on her left, so that he shielded her from the view of anyone passing in the street, and he was looking at her in that way that made her feel as though he might have noticed some attractive quality of hers that had escaped even her own notice. Of course, she glowed whenever she thought of Henry, and Henry was always in her thoughts. “Well, do share.”

“The public is hungry for news about you, Miss Diana,” he went on in a voice that didn’t quite touch down on seriousness. “Can’t you tell us something? Perhaps there’s wedding
news? Or maybe something about this Snowden Cairns fellow.”

“He is not a beau, if you’re wondering that,” Diana answered quickly, remembering how poorly the last report of her possible attachment had gone over.

“No? Hmmm…and your Christmas dinner?”

“Oh,” Diana replied gaily. They were moving forward, up the avenue, at a good pace now. “We had turkey with cranberries and asparagus points on toast and hothouse lettuce with mayonnaise and, later, plum pudding!”

“Don’t tease me, Diana. I meant, were there any special guests? Perhaps one with the first initial E.?”

Diana smiled her elusive little smile. She was surprised to find within herself a small inclination to tell him, although she wasn’t certain if it was because she wanted the record set straight, or because she enjoyed telling her own story, or if it was simply that she liked manipulating what the papers printed. “I really don’t know what you mean” was her eventual reply.

He sighed. She had never seen him disappointed, and it only made her wish she could tell him more. But he was looking away from her now. He was trying to get a cigarette going even as he walked into the wind.

“Are there really no other stories for you to write?” Diana affected a sympathetic face.

“There are,” he said, his eyes meeting hers in a passing moment. The cigarette was evidently lit, and he exhaled a cloud of smoke. “But I just don’t want to pursue either of them.”

“And why not?” The rhythm in Diana’s chest had slowed to an occasional thud. Was it possible that Davis Barnard was jealous over her? Because he had heard that Henry was in love with her and that perhaps there was a wedding on the way? It was a little wild, Diana had to admit to herself, that news would have traveled so quickly, but he had, after all, been prodding her about a wedding, and it would maybe explain Henry’s keeping himself scarce on Christmas Eve….

“Because they are neither of them are very good for the Hollands, and, as you know, I never want to write anything that might hurt your family.” They had come to East Twentieth Street, and Diana looked to see if his face didn’t betray some of his meaning. She had to turn there—she was almost home. “The first is about Elizabeth; that’s why I was asking about her. Seems her engagement ring turned up in a pawnshop out west and now everyone is speculating if she isn’t alive somewhere.”

Diana’s heart sped, and she gave a loud laugh that she hoped distracted from the color going out of her face. “Surely I’d know if that were true,” she shot back, without the slightest idea whether she was convincing or not.

“It would be a wonderful thing of course…” Davis said
earnestly. “Although the pawnshop isn’t a very nice element of the whole story. People wonder, if she is alive, what sort of ordeal she’s been through. I know it would be devastating to get your hopes up and then find out that she’s still dead.”

“Yes.” There were few people on the street, all of them too cold to observe what passed between a young lady from a good family and a newspaper writer on a Broadway street corner. All of the sudden, Diana wished to be home already. “I suppose Tiffany makes a lot of rings.”

“Well, they’re just rumors. No one knows for sure. Though there has been talk of tracking down the man who sold it and having him arrested.” He paused and looked Diana over. “I suppose you gave that up long ago.”

“I wonder what the other story is?” Diana was almost afraid to ask, but the cold was setting in now, and she was growing more antsy with every passing moment. She feared that if he went on about Elizabeth, she would surely betray something.

“Ah! Well, that’s not so bad either if you look at it from a certain angle, though some people would say that Henry Schoonmaker getting engaged to Penelope Hayes at this particular moment signifies—”

“What?” Diana had lost any capacity for coyness or subterfuge. Her vision had gone spotty, and it was all she could do not to reach up and put a hand on the columnist’s wide shoulder to steady herself. Gramercy was only a few blocks
away, but she was stuck there, at that asymmetrical street corner with its high buildings and noisy street traffic.

“Yes, I didn’t like it either. But that’s the story. That Buck fellow who Penelope is always hanging around with told me. He’s my cousin, I’m ashamed to say, though I like to think of him as at least a second cousin….”

“Is it to be announced?” So this was betrayal. It was like being left alone in the desert at dusk without water or warmth. It left your mouth dry and your will broken. It sapped your tears and made you hollow. The news sounded impossible until she remembered the look on Henry’s face yesterday, when he’d come to her door, which she had so naïvely explained away. Perhaps he had been coming to tell her yesterday, or maybe he had wanted to take her and run away. None of that mattered anymore. Now she knew what cowardice he was capable of.

Davis shrugged. “I suppose everyone likes attention. Probably I’ll run it myself…. It’s a good little piece of news, if you get over the distastefulness of it all—”

Diana wasn’t sure what else he said. She was running down Twentieth Street at an absurd gallop, her whole body lunging forward and swaying as she did. The cold was so far under her clothes that she could hardly feel her feet. She certainly couldn’t feel her heart. All she hoped for at that particular moment was that she might be able to reach home and her sister before the sobbing started.

D
EPARTMENT STORES NO LONGER LOOKED THE
same to Carolina. She had been told by Tristan that she had better get a dressmaker: Girls of her sort were not seen in ready-to-wear, he said, and she knew this must be the truth, since he told her so even to his own detriment. After all,
he
worked in a department store, and this would mean fewer sales for him. But it was only the day after Christmas, and all of the best dressmakers would be unavailable until at least the New Year, he had warned her when she arrived on a mission to purchase shirtwaists and accessories and skirts and a lace or two on Mr. Longhorn’s account.

The arrangement with Mr. Longhorn felt entirely easy and comfortable to her, she told Tristan when he asked. Though the older gentleman did not seem to want to hear any facts of her previous life, he did—when she hinted, over Christmas dinner in the hotel’s grand dining room, that she might have a sister in the city—say that the elder Miss Broad ought to have some presents for the holiday as well. And so
Carolina had entered Lord & Taylor and looked across the rows of tables with their precious objects and felt neither fear nor unquenchable desire, but rather that she could simply have any of those things that interested her.

“At any rate, Miss Broad, you are looking very well taken care of today….”

Carolina twisted about, catching her reflection in the mirror, imagining that her contortions presented a view of her in which she possessed the long neck, the plush lips, the hazy eyes and fluffy hair of a Gibson girl. “Tristan,” she remarked with a certain languor, “I am going to need all your help today.”

Tristan watched her, drawing his hand along the edge of the polished cherry table as he did. He was in shirtsleeves and a brown waistcoat, and his chin looked soft, as though it had been shaved that morning. “Today,” Tristan replied, “there is no one else to serve. You, my lovely, are a success.”

Carolina’s cheek bent toward her shoulder. She wondered if he might try to kiss her again. Not that she supposed she should really be doing any of that anymore—but she couldn’t help but find the memory a little exciting. It was nice, she now knew, to be touched.

“It really worked, didn’t it?” Tristan’s voice had lowered, although she still wished he wouldn’t talk about it in public. “You didn’t think it would…I could tell. You looked so
scared in the hotel that night. But I knew. I’ve been around, I know when to play a card.”

Carolina nodded faintly. She found she didn’t want to acknowledge the thrust of this conversation out loud.

“Before we go looking for things for you, though…” There was a quality in Tristan’s voice that she had never heard before, and it made her turn toward him. “The high-class ladies I’ve befriended in the past, when I’ve had a small debt to pay or some other expense, I’ve filched a little here or there and nobody has ever noticed.” He paused and looked away. Behind him, shopgirls hurried back and forth. “I have a confession to make. I took your money, but I didn’t know it was all you had.”

Before Carolina knew whether she should be angry or frightened or grateful for this news, whether her impression of Tristan was that he was more or less trustworthy now, he gave her a wolfish grin and went on.

“But you see how much better it worked out in the end? I hope you feel I have repaid my debt.”

Like any society girl confronted with an uncomfortable fact, Carolina felt overwhelmingly now that she simply didn’t want to have to think about it anymore. “Oh, let’s not talk about all that hash,” she said. Then she thought of something pleasant and smiled. “Let’s see what pretty things Mr. Longhorn doesn’t want to buy me today.”

His response didn’t come immediately, and she wondered in the interval whether he wouldn’t keep trying to bring up the past. But then a smile came, spreading steadily under the neat mustache, and there was that flash in his hazel eyes. “Yes, let’s,” he said, and offered an arm. As she took it, they moved forward across the floor, each one playing their part to perfection.

As Carolina’s strides brought her further into that sanctum of all that was fine and beautiful, she began to notice her reflection in the mirrored columns that supported the high, arched ceiling with its classic white filigree designs and dangling chandeliers. Everything held the light of precious metals, and it was all to reflect on her. Or girls like her. But she was now, most assuredly, a girl like
that.
One could see it, plainly, as the reflection passed from one gold-shot mirror into another, with the upturn of her nose and the careless cast of her pretty eyes.

She knew where they were going. The Holland girls had told Claire about it, and Claire had told her. They were going to one of the private rooms where special customers could sit in comfort and wait for things to be brought for them. She had even heard that there were sweets and champagne. Until that morning, she had never been sure whether she was even really wanted in any of the shopping emporiums. But now she felt completely taken up.

Just as they were about to pass into the elevator area, with its peacock-colored enamel-inlaid walls and large bronze arrows bouncing in arcs to show which floor the carriage was on, Carolina noticed something that made her lungs swell up with air and then crumple as though they had been rained on by shattering glass. “Oh,” she whispered quietly, to herself, so that no one else could hear.

Over there, walking between tables of neckties as though he had just walked down the plank and onto the harbor of a foreign country, was Will. Beautiful Will, with his serious eyes and his hair a little overgrown looking around him in that meticulous way he had. His skin had somehow or other been darkened by the sun, and he looked as though he had seen some hard things. There was a sweet ache spreading all over, and she had to close her eyes so that the feeling wouldn’t overwhelm her. In a moment she tried to open them, but found that she had to bring her hand up to cover her gaze again.

Maybe he really had read about her in the papers. Maybe he was there to fetch her. He hadn’t seen her yet, however, and even in her brief glimpses of him, she knew that he hadn’t made his fortune out west. He was wearing those same serge trousers, that same slightly too large black coat. There were no new comforts in his life, she could see that in a few seconds. But still she wanted him. The want had not faded after all.

“Miss Broad,” she heard Tristan say.

She nodded, to him or to herself she wasn’t sure. The elevator doors had opened, and other shoppers were passing them on their way to the registers. She moved her hand. It was somewhat easier to watch him when there were bodies passing between them. And though she felt so light as to have no control of her limbs, she found that a few more blinkless moments allowed her to see what she must do. The want was there, but she couldn’t follow it. Will was so close to her, and she had come so far. He would understand how foolish he had been if he saw her, but then she would have to come down, and she couldn’t stand that. She couldn’t stand to fall even a little bit.

“Are you all right, Miss Broad?”

“Oh…yes,” she said. She stepped away from Will and let go of the old wants. “Just a little headache that came and went.”

As the operator brought down the iron grate, she told herself she’d made the right decision. Her new friend Penelope Hayes would not have stooped at the sight of some passing fancy from years ago. Her desires would already have been set on something far better. It would be so like Elizabeth to stumble on sentimentality, to give up everything for some old dream.

“Are you sure that you’re all right?”

“Yes.”

She wet her lips and forced air back into her lungs. She thought of Mr. Longhorn as a young man and how many young men she had met just two nights ago and of all the things she deserved. She thought of the difference between real kisses and imagined ones. She smiled, although it was a weak sort of smile. She could not help but think, as she was borne upward beside Tristan, who seemed like so many things and was never quite any of them, that it was unfortunate that she had ever known him. It was true that she might have been too shy or gaffe-prone ever to win Mr. Longhorn’s patronage without him, but even so, he was becoming distasteful. He would have to be cut loose soon, too, she told herself, with that hardness that was taking form inside her heart. She would have to be nice to him for a while longer, but already she did not need him.

Her smile dimmed, but she kept looking at Tristan as she said, with a certain declarative panache: “In fact, I feel just perfect.”