Splendor: A Luxe Novel (11 page)

Yours, Mother

IN THE CAIRNS BROWNSTONE, ON AN EMINENTLY respectable stretch of Madison, everything was in its place and an air of prosperous well-being floated throughout the rooms. The cook was preparing dinner, for all the Holland women would be dining there that evening. Elizabeth had had a busy week, but she’d finally managed some rest that afternoon, and now that order had been established, and the place was looking so much more like a home, a healthy aspect had returned to her cheeks. So Elizabeth thought, anyway, as she lingered a little while longer in front of the ormolu mirror with the embossed ribbon detail in her bedroom. Behind her in the frame were the white-canopied bed and garnet-colored wallpaper. Her complexion had always been pale, but as she studied her reflection, she thought she detected a hint of the pinkness that Will used to like, too. Ever since she had heard about the success of his oil field, she had been wearing black in a secret act of devotional widowhood, but it did not—she couldn’t help but notice—make her look any smaller.

Soon Diana would be coming through the door—Elizabeth could almost imagine how her soft little arms would be thrown wide in the expectation of an embrace, as she cried out: “But you’re so gigantic!” Despite the tenor of their mother’s note, Elizabeth knew that the old lady was relieved, as she was, to have Diana back. That was the main thing, and Elizabeth felt extra lucky to have such a nice home to welcome her little sister into. She had not paused the hectic business of making a household all week, and she was glad that she hadn’t, now that she knew what a homecoming it would be.

Of course there was another, barely conscious reason for her constant busyness, which was that whenever she paused too long her thoughts turned to the document that linked her and Will’s names long before they were actually married. How had her father realized, she would have liked to know. Had her first love confided in him? But she would never have answers to questions like that. The two men who could answer them were gone from her. And then there was the issue that turned her stomach a little sour, which was that her husband—the one whose name she was called by in public now, the one currently pledged to protect her, the one who she’d most recently promised to serve—had known of it for so long, and not told her. There was a tiny voice in the back regions of her mind, insisting that Snowden should get his hands off what had been intended for her and Will to share.

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Elizabeth gazed at her reflection a long time, like the vain girl she used to be, and not the mother she’d soon become. When the bell rang below, she tucked a few stray hairs back into the twist rising from the nape of her neck and tried to pinch some color into her cheeks. How had it grown so late?

But when she came—hurrying, and yet not particularly fast—out into the hall, which joined the second floor rooms and ended at the steep stairs into the foyer, she saw the sun streaming in through the stained glass fanlight and realized that it was far too early for her family to be arriving. She came onto the landing and looked down. The carpet, which she had chosen at the beginning of the week for its handsome oriental design of burnt sienna and teal woven threads, spread from below the landing to the front entryway. She couldn’t help but pause, now, and feel a touch pleased with the choice. Presently Mrs. Schmidt walked across it and greeted the afternoon caller. Elizabeth stepped forward and rested a hand on the banister, but she couldn’t see who was there; a hanging lamp obscured her view.

“I’m sorry, but he’s not in,” Mrs. Schmidt was saying.

Elizabeth stepped left gingerly so as to peek at the housekeeper’s interlocutor. She felt an instinct, not yet fully comprehended, to be silent and secretive, even though it was her own house. As the man’s face emerged beyond the intrusive porcelain shade, pockmarked and swollen, she was glad of that instinct. For she knew him—but how? He was large, and neither poorly nor richly dressed. He was not a man of her class, but he did not appear to be a servant, either. Snowden had a retinue of men who worked for him when he was leading explorations, but this fellow was none of these.

His face was not handsome, but it was not exactly ugly, either. There was something large and boyish about him that did not seem to warrant reproach. But for Elizabeth, that face and that man had a distinctly awful quality about them. It made her feel cold all over—and for weeks now she had been enduring the kind of heat that ceiling fans were useless against.

“I’ll see he gets it,” Mrs. Schmidt said, and then she placed a note on the pink marble-topped cabinet to the left of the entry. The door closed, and Mrs. Schmidt walked toward the back of the stairs without once looking up.

Above, on the landing, Elizabeth sucked in air. The man was gone, but his face hovered in her mind. She could not begin to understand what it was about him that made her want to cower and hide, or why she now felt so nauseated. The note he’d left remained idle on the table. It was just a little thing, folded and white, and yet she was drawn to the scrap of paper as though it had some gravitational power. She descended—slowly of course, one hand clinging to the banister, the other rested against her protruding belly. The sunlight in the foyer, when she stepped off the final stair, was momentarily blinding.

“Mrs. Cairns—are you all right?”

Embarrassment stuck in Elizabeth’s throat as she turned, startled, to see Mrs. Schmidt standing in the shadows of the hall. Shame over her intention to read her husband’s private correspondence, as well as any black notions she might have allowed herself to harbor, swept over her. The fatigue must have done it, she decided. She was so tired she was only half capable of logical thinking.

“Can I do something for you?” The older woman came out from the shadows. She wore an apron over the heavy black dress she donned, even now, during the extreme heat.

Elizabeth drew herself up with what dignity she could manage, and smiled softly. “I heard someone at the door—” she began in a feathery voice.

“It was a caller for Mr. Cairns. He left a note. Perhaps you—”

“Ah, good,” Elizabeth replied with strained lightness. “Then I shall not have anything to worry about! I think I will go try to rest a little before my family comes.” Mrs. Schmidt turned away her face in subservient acknowledgment of her mistress’s intention, and Elizabeth tried to maintain a superior mien as she moved heavily back up the stairs.

When she reached her room, she crossed to the bed, unable to meet her own eyes in the mirror again. She was, in truth, relieved that she had been interrupted before some nonsensical emotions led her to snoop in her husband’s mail, for she had never wanted to be that kind of wife. Though she did lie down, she did not in the end manage to fall asleep.

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Thirteen

If you’re concerned about another

run-in like the one we had at the

opera, I would be more than

happy to make arrangements

face-to-face at the place and

time of your determination.

Affectionately,

I. W.

CAROLINA STEPPED INTO THE FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL in a cloud of expensive perfume, under a broad hat bedecked with cloth flowers, and felt the poetry of her selection of a meeting place. Her mission that afternoon gave her nerves, but she was wearing a fitted jacket of ivory-and-rose pin-striped linen and a matching skirt, both of which fit her exquisitely as only really expensive clothes do, and proved how far she’d come since the afternoon when she was run out of this very hotel by an unkind concierge. Now she knew better than to be intimidated by the Fifth Avenue, which faced Madison Square. It was not as modern or as fine as the New Netherland, where she had lived for a time, or the Waldorf-Astoria, which carried its royal associations in its name. In fact, she’d never returned because it had ceased to seem fancy to her long ago—and not because of any lingering fears about the concierge.

“Miss Carolina…”

She turned, surprised a little at herself for feeling so cool despite the heat of the day and the identity of the speaker—for there was no getting around the fact that he was a threat to everything she had fought her way toward. But it was dark and hush in the lobby of the hotel, and she had spent the last week being courted by an incomparably eligible bachelor. Her belief in her own powers of attraction, in her social grace, had increased tenfold in those seven days. If someone on Wall Street had put everything on her confidence the week before, he could have retired like Carnegie today. Her bee-stung lips gave up only half a smile as she confronted Tristan Wrigley’s golden gaze.

“Why, Mr. Wrigley.” The flat delivery had become part of her charm.

“Can I tempt you with a pot of tea, a pastry, perhaps a late afternoon aperitif?” His brown waistcoat and white shirt were similar to the ones he’d worn the day they first met—she had been running from the concierge, and he had been leaving his job at Lord & Taylor, and they had collided on the sidewalk right there in front of the hotel. She did not like to think of it anymore, but what followed had been rather dissolute. When, on Wednesday, she had received the note from Tristan, it had momentarily conjured all her old gauche selves, along with several helpings of shame. But then she had noticed his unschooled handwriting, his rather clumsy choice of words, and told herself she should not be file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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so worried about making him disappear.

She took a breath to steady herself. “No, Mr. Wrigley, I don’t think you could.” Placing his hands behind his back, he bent his lean frame forward. It was a chivalrous gesture, but still a few seconds passed before it began to dawn on her that—though they were meeting because Tristan claimed he’d been cheated of a portion of her fortune—he was flirting with her.

“This is business, after all,” she added coyly.

“As you wish.” Smile lines emerged under his high cheekbones, and a twinkle passed in his hazel eyes.

Then he swept his hand forward, like he was showing her around the glove department, and they moved together to the patterned velvet sofa best sheltered by potted palms.

She perched on the seat, her shoulders thrown back and her hands primly on her knee. Sweetly she began:

“You feel you are owed something.”

“We both know you would be back to working as a maid, or far worse, if I hadn’t intervened,” he answered in the same charming tone.

“Mr. Longhorn knew very well what I was, and still he thought I should be taken care of.” She let her eyes drift to her skirt, and for a moment she stroked the fine fabric. When she spoke again, some of the sugar had gone from her voice. “But then, I know what you are, and I think you should be taken care of, too.”

Now she turned in her seat to look at him straight on. He had been gazing at her, and she wondered briefly if the desire he’d felt for her the night he pressed her against the wall of that elevator had grown a little unbearable, now that she was such a polished version of herself. “I knew you would not forget me, Carolina.”

“Perhaps you should tell me what kind of figure you had in mind.” He placed his elbow on the back of the sofa so that he almost might have draped it round her shoulders, and brought his mouth close to her ear. The lobby hummed with the low sounds of elegant hospitality, and bellboys pushed brass carts back and forth across the thick, wine-colored carpets. A few guests lingered by the front desk, but as she had suspected, there was no sign of anyone from her circle anywhere near what had only once been the best hotel in the city. He exhaled and then whispered a sum that, half a year ago, would have sounded so impossible as to be hilarious, but which now to her only represented a moderately decadent holiday. After all, she was a girl whose total earnings in a year as a lady’s maid could not have bought her the suit she’d been buttoned into that morning.

She tipped her head so that her hat obscured the expression on her face, and then stood wordlessly. By the time her chin rose, exposing her features to Tristan, she had made them stony. His mouth opened, a dull, dark slot, and he watched as she extended a gloved hand.

“I will have a check made out to you for just that amount, and it shall be delivered to you at Lord and Taylor before the end of the day.”

“Could you have it instead delivered to me at my apartment?” he asked, a little too quickly. Then she knew that he had debts and needed the money badly, and soon, and that he didn’t want his employers or anybody else knowing about it. There was something hopeful and a little pathetic about him that she’d never noticed before.

“Of course.”

In moments it would be over, and yet she found that she was in no hurry to leave. It was as though, now that she was winning, she didn’t want the battle to be over already. She straightened her spine, and let her fist rest against her waist, proudly. This was a pose, and she had a sudden flash of how flattering the chandelier light was on her handsome figure.

“You look awfully pretty, Miss Broad,” Tristan grinned. He was relieved, too, she guessed.

The compliment sent a girlish sensation washing through her, and she found herself wanting to say a sentence that had been brimming on her tongue for days, but for which she hadn’t found the ideal listener.

“What is it about you?” he pursued.

The smile that followed was involuntary, and she couldn’t help the words that came out of her mouth next. “I’m in love,” she very nearly whispered. “It gives a girl a certain something, isn’t that what they file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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say?”

Tristan’s eyebrows levitated, and in the following seconds Carolina felt very tawdry for even having mentioned her blooming romance with Leland while in the same room as the salesman who had known her at her worst. “Are you now?” he replied in a manner more sly than chivalrous. The snakelike slenderness and the coiled way he carried himself were again obvious. “With that Bouchard fellow?” She cleared her throat and stepped away from him, trying to summon her late hauteur. But her nerves had returned. “You can expect that check, Mr. Wrigley. I don’t imagine we shall see one another again.” Quick as she could, Carolina twirled about and strode for the exit, suddenly wanting for that last bit to be true more than ever before.